Movie Review by Silvia Felce
Starring: Channing Tatum, Jenna Dewan, Rachel Griffiths, Mario
Director: Anne Fletcher
It is always difficult to review a teen movie…on one hand you want to try to watch it from a teenager’s perspective and see what he or she would think of it, on the other hand you can’t help be your own age.
STEP UP tells the story of underprivileged boy Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum) who gets to do community service at the local school of arts. He meets Nora (Jenna Dewan), the school’s prima ballerina who needs to replace her dance partner for the final year’s show case as he conveniently broke his leg a couple of weeks before the show. As Nora can’t find anybody else in the whole school who is good enough to dance with her, she turns to Tyler, having seen him dancing in the street with his friends.
The movie looks very promising at the beginning, with images of a ballet class alternating with kids dancing hip hop on the street and the soundtrack sounds really cool. But then the story starts developing into cliches and predictable lines. For people of my generation, who have grown up with films such as FLASHDANCE and FAME, we’ve seen it all…students practising in the corridor of the art school, a group of people suddenly dancing a well choreographed routine in a club, and of course, the struggling to learn, the pushy head teacher and so on…
Having said that, I think teenage girls may still like the film. It’s the story of a young girl, the romance, the music, a kind of hip hop and Justine style songs, and a lot of fit people! Tatum not only is cute as you would expect him to be, but he can dance and as a bonus he can pout as well as Keira Knightley.
Overall, the film is not great and it is not going to become a classic, but if you have a teenage sister you might take her to watch this, and she’ll have a nice afternoon.
