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The movie "Dance Flick" is a complete flop.
Much like the other Wayans Brothers' productions, "Dance Flick" is a spoof that takes classic scenes from other movies. In this case, the boys borrow from dance movies "Step Up" and "Save the Last Dance."
Both the plot of "Save the Last Dance" and "Dance Flick" revolve around Megan (Shoshana Bush), a young white girl who used to dance. She is auditioning at Juilliard while her mother dies in a freak car accident driving on her way to see her. This means Megan must move in with her dead-beat dad, and she decides to give up dance.
She then attends a school where she is in the minority. There she meets a new friend, Charity, and her brother Thomas (Damon Wayans Jr.), who becomes Megan's love interest. They try to help her get her groove back, and along the way spoofs from the different dance movies are woven to present an attempt at a comedic storyline.
The movie even steals classic moments from non-dance-based movies, like "Twilight." It steals the scene in "Twilight" where Bella and Edward are at the prom. Although "Twilight" may be a stretch to include in a dance-based movie, prom and dancing go hand in hand, so that is probably the motivation behind including that scene.
The Wayanses just didn't meet their usual standards in this film. Normally they do a magnificent job at comedies, but this film did not measure up. It is solely based on "Save the Last Dance" and just had a few random scenes from the other movies. Previous films included a large group of movies and flowed more seamlessly together in the comedy skits.
This movie was just a bore. All of the funny parts were shown in the previews, and it just seemed to be an awful dull version of "Save the Last Dance" with some other silly movie references thrown it. It wasn't put together well enough to get a true comedic effect. It was predictable, as lots of movies are, but as a viewer I could guess every joke and comedic element before it happened. That's just not good. A viewer wants to be a little surprised, even with comedy.
The movie begins with a dance off and ends with one and does not have a lot in between.
Wayans and Bush do the best they can with the parts they were given and probably will do well in future comedy roles. This film might have done better if the Wayanses didn't already have such a great comedic reputation, but after their past movies, this one can't make the cut.
E-mail: freestyle@lnpnews.com
