Step Up (2006)

Boy (Channing Tatum) is great street dancer. Girl (Jenna Dewan) is ballerina with attitude. Street meets gifted. Their worlds clash. Overcome obstacles. They dance together. The end.

Teen movies of the nature are typically predictable, but some, like Save the Last Dance manage to rise about mediocrity to be solid examples of the genre. Step Up wallows in the gutters of the clichéd. Director Anne Fletcher's lack of experience is blatant in this amateurish display. She would have the audience believe true tension exists between the mumbling spazbot Tatum and the uninspired Dewan. Please. Tatum would be better served to take elocution. Dewan needs some age.

The dancing sequences are energetic and repetitive. Dewan's 'senior piece' is a reshuffling of movement from the opening sequence. Even the (questionably) truly inspired scene in the restaurant comes across as like a High School Musical on the Streets. Sad.

Step Up doesn't require much of its audience-- a brain dead body will suffice.