Among the musts missing from Dance Flick (other than plot, characters, laughs, etc.):
* Break-dancers thwarting an evil developer (Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo)
* Frank Stallone songs (Staying Alive)
* The line "Doggie Chow. I used to love Doggie Chow." (Showgirls)
* Adrian Zmed (Grease 2)
* Lorenzo Lamas break-dancing (Body Rock)
* The Lambada (either The Forbidden Dance or Lambada, take your pick).
All of which you really need before you call yourself "the funniest dance movie of all time," don't you think? Fact is, even by the sub-standards of disposable goof-offs (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie), Dance Flick is a painful, slapdash, unfunny, gross, inane debacle -- a comedy without a clue, a spoof without any sense of sport.
"The funniest dance movie of all time?" Please.
(Really, why target a genre that's already borderline hilarious? What's next: William Shatner Movie? Ben Affleck Motion Picture?) It culls heavily -- and predictably -- from more recent teen dance films (Step Up, How She Move, Save The Last Dance, Hairspray) while also referencing the occasional golden oldie (Flashdance, Fame).
Plunk in the odd pop-culture non sequitur (a late-inning Twilight-inspired moment, a mid-point reference to Halle Berry and Lindsay Lohan's driving records) and presumably gullible teenagers who forked out $12 will be satiated. Or so the logic goes.
The tone is set early on with a (what else?) street dance battle that quickly turns silly, stupid and scatological. From here, the story takes a turn towards Save the Last Dance with Shoshana Bush starring as an uptight suburban girl who moves to the inner city following her mother's death. There, she finds conflict and then romance with Thomas Uncles (Damon Wayans Jr.).
But really it's just about moving from one puerile gag to the next. (The nadir of which comes with the introduction of an instructor whose surname is spelled "Camel Toe"; you can probably guess the rest.)
It's pointless, pin-headed and proof-positive that talent can skip a generation. To wit: the next wave of Wayans who are the sons and nephews of Keenan and Co. and are responsible for a movie that is just a title in lieu of a script.
Or, to put it another way, two left feet in search of a brain.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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