One out of
Five stars
Running time:
83 mins
Desperately unfunny comedy that lurches clumsily from one tedious spoof scene to the next, under the mistaken impression that just referencing a film or a celebrity is enough to get laughs.
What's it all about?
Strictly speaking, Dance Flick isn't quite from the people who brought you the likes of Epic Movie, Date Movie and Disaster Movie, but it might as well be. Instead it's by some of the lesser-known Wayans brothers (i.e. the people who brought you Scary Movie, White Chicks and Little Man), with Damien Wayans taking directing duties and Damon Wayans Jr. starring as Thomas Uncles (geddit?) a gangster-threatened hip-hopping high school kid who falls for former ballerina-with-a-tragic-past Megan White (Shoshana Bush). Will they win the big dance off and save the day?
The Bad
Essentially, the plot is a mash-up of all the recent urban dance movies such as Step Up, Step Up 2 The Streets, Stomp The Yard, You Got Served, Honey and Hairspray, although, bizarrely, the template it most closely follows is the Julia Stiles-starring Save The Last Dance from eight years ago.
The writers are obviously convinced that just chucking in a spoof scene from a well known movie (and there are plenty of non-dance movies, including Twilight, Juno, Ray and Black Snake Moan) or referencing a not-so-recent celebrity scandal (e.g. Halle Berry's hit-and-run) is enough to get laughs. It isn’t, so they throw in lots of bodily fluid humour and crude gags like naming a character Mrs Cameltoe (Amy Sedaris), but that doesn't work either.
The Worst
The performances are so dull that you'll struggle to remember what any of the actors look like afterwards. The film does have a couple of half-decent gags (the opening, increasingly ridiculous dance off, Megan's tragedy-strewn flashback) but the rest of them are lazy, unimaginative and painfully unfunny.
Worth seeing?
In a word, no. Dance Flick is lazily written, lowest common denominator rubbish and it’s unquestionably one of the worst films of the year. Avoid like your life depended on it.