Picoreview: Step Up 2: The Streets: As good as your average dance movie, which means less good than Step Up, but possibly good enough to explain why there ended up being FIVE Step Up movies.
It turns out this is the first one I’d seen in the theatres, and I don’t think the dancing is quite as good in it as in the first film. A lot of it seems less…controlled, although that may be deliberate, because that’s kind of the thing the main character lacks, so it may be that the whole vibe of the street crews is meant to look that way. In which case, kudos to them.
This one did, however, feature a tap dancer, which automatically gives it a place near and dear to my heart. :)
I think the lead actress is a better actor than the lead actress in Step Up; the lead actor is not, however, better than Channing Tatum, either as an actor or a dancer. He wasn’t *bad*, as far as actors in dance movies go, it’s just that there was actually a reason Tatum broke out with his Step Up movie.
Ted, who arrived home in time for the Final Dance-Off, watched the kid who is by far the most fun in this–“Moose,” played by Adam G Sevani, who is adorkable–and said “Is Tatum that good a dancer?” so I made him watch Tatum’s cameo dance scene at the beginning of the film. It’s not his best Step Up dance by a long shot, but it’s certainly enough to show he’s got the chops. And the falls in it are spectacular, which counts for something.
These movies always feature a romance between the leads, but this one shouldn’t have. They had no noticeable chemistry and what was nominally flirting…well. Didn’t convince me. I thought it felt more like…two people whose parents have always thought they’d get married performing the time-honored ritual of Acting Like They’re Flirting Without Either Of Them Meaning It At All. I was more convinced the boy was puppy-dog infatuated than the girl, who just really didn’t seem to have time for him as anything but a dancer, so even though I’d seen it before I couldn’t help hoping it wouldn’t end with a kiss. It did, of course, because that’s how these movies end, but still.
Mostly it made me want to watch more of LXD: Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, which Step Up did *not* make me want to do, which leads me to believe that Step Up was satisfying on its own and Step Up 2 left me feeling it could have been better.