They're So Dancy, You Already Know: STEP UP ALL IN

I hadn’t realized how essential the Step Up movies’ simple plotting was until now. Step Up All In, the fifth in the series of loosely connected stories about exceptionally skilled dancers trying to find a way to do what they love, gets rid of even a simple plot, preferring instead a jumble of thin motivations and bad dialogue to get us from dance sequence to dance sequence. Its predecessors had sturdy structures, following competitions, protests, self-actualization, and/or romances to create throughlines on which to hang dancing. Here, screenwriter John Swetnam simply gathers up some characters from Step Up 2 the Streets, Step Up 3D, and Step Up Revolution, leaning heavily on the charm that comes with seeing familiar faces. I was happy to see them, especially since their unspoken histories bring the only actual characterization to All In.

The excuses for dancing involves the leader of the dance crew from Revolution (Ryan Guzman) left behind after his pals go back to Miami, leaving him in L.A. chasing an increasingly distant dream of making his passion his career. I liked how quickly the movie undoes the previous happy ending. "We won $50,000!" "Yeah, split 12 ways." He sees an ad for a Las Vegas dance contest and asks his friend and series regular Moose (Adam G. Sevani) to help him put together a new team. The winning crew gets a three-year residency at a fancy hotel’s theater. Victory could bring, at long last, a stable paycheck for staging the elaborately choreographed numbers that are these movies’ bread and butter. It’s the Fast Five franchise all-star team-up approach, although the Step Ups won’t go full Fast & Furious without wooing the Tatums back for another spin. Like that car-racing series, Step Up has won much affection for knowing the simple pleasures it must deliver. There must be an attractive, talented ensemble of dancers stuck in a situation that can only be danced its way out of.

The Vegas competition is a half-clever reality show parody (the screen fills with Twitter handles, producers do a smidge of meddling, and the game’s not as straightforward as it appears) hosted by a flamboyant pop star named Alexxa Brava (Izabella Miko). She dresses like a knockoff Lady Gaga and acts like a wilier Effie Trinket. The part is small, but Miko’s performance is big. She’s full of crazy energy, hilarious chewing away at the scenery as she plays ringmaster to the contest. Meanwhile, the real focus is on dancers pursuing love and self-validation between practice sessions and dance battles, but none of their speaking performances stand out.

They’re just there to fill in the connective tissue the script needs to get us to another production number. And what production numbers! They have fun props and interesting sets: a stage, a boxing ring, a laboratory, and some kind of futurist gladiator pit. So what if you spend the time characters stand around talking exposition working through lame strained melodramatics and obvious plot turns wishing they’d just shut up and dance? When they finally do, it’s glorious. The plot fades into the background and the movie is simply amazing. Their rivalries and romances are only interesting when communicated through body language and dance moves alone.

Like the other 3D efforts in the series (especially my beloved Step Up 3D, which is a perfect movie, the best possible version of what it wants to be) All In films the high-energy moves in shots that capture the dancers’ bodies head to toe, the better to admire their wide expressive range of movement within the space. They’re athletic, blasting through thrilling, effervescent hip-hop choreography set to booming club beats. Staged with wit and flare, the precision with which the actor-dancers (like Briana Evigan, Twitch, Mari Koda, Alyson Stoner, and twins Facundo and Martín Lombard) pop off the screen in low angle shots, takes full advantage of the crystal-clear depth of vision the shooting technology provides.

The director this time around is Trish Sie, a music video veteran making her feature debut. Most famous for the OK Go video “Here It Goes Again,” which featured the band dancing on a chain of treadmills in a one-take shot, Sie gets dutifully through the pained and strained story then brings creativity and energy to the only scenes that really matter. There’s no imaginative equivalent to the treadmill concept in the choreography, but there is a sweet dance to “Every Little Step” set on a carnival tilt-a-whirl after hours. Nice of the security guard to turn on the music instead of turning them in, a sign that even the extras want the characters to dance as often as possible. At best, the way those bodies move is jaw-dropping.

In the fantastic finale staged in a circular set with an ecstatic audience in the far background and dancers up, down, and all around the set, the energy in the performances is contagious. That’s where the characters are at their most appealing and impressive. None of the actors may be as effortlessly charming a screen presence as Fred and Ginger or Gene, but the material’s certainly not doing them any favors this time around, either. It’s a nothing plot filled with just enough dance and style to keep the good times rolling. Even with a lesser entry in the series, I still had to resist dancing my way out of the theater.

In Your Face: STEP UP 3D

Step Up 3D is hardly innovative on the plot level. How many other modern dance movies feature dancers who need to win the big competition to meet their goals? How many other dance movies feature fresh-faced kids conquering all problems through their smooth moves? Over the last decade we’ve seen the same basic patterns of against-all-odds, wrong-side-of-the-tracks dance-battle uplift repeated in such unmemorable would-be spectacles as You Got Served, Stomp the Yard, Step Up, and Step Up 2 the Streets. Those movies saddled their dancing with too much dumb plot and then chopped up the dancing into bits of visual stimulation that flew by without a chance to appreciate the talent and physicality in the performers’ movements. Step Up 3D works better by downplaying the plotting, and toning down the dumbness, while foregrounding the glorious dance, holding shots (sometimes) long enough for us to truly appreciate the choreography.

I saw and immediately forgot the earlier Step Ups, so I entered this movie with only vague memories about what happened in earlier installments. It turned out, that works just fine. This movie seems to have almost no narrative connection to its predecessors. It follows a kid nicknamed “Moose” (Adam G. Sevani) and his best friend, but not girlfriend, Camille (Alyson Stoner) as they arrive at NYU’s freshmen orientation. They’re the breakout stars of the picture. For me, they were the two members of the cast most adept at navigating the often clumsy dialogue. They had as much of an ease with the acting as with the dancing, something that could not be said for almost anyone else in the cast.

Early in the movie, Moose’s dad gets to solemnly look at his son and express happiness that a future engineer won’t also be a dancer. That’s good for a laugh. Moose almost immediately gets into a dance battle while wandering away from the campus tour. He’s subsequently drawn into the plight of a cool dance crew that desperately needs to win a dance competition in order to pay the back rent on their warehouse that has been converted into a combination house and practice space.

Led by an aspiring filmmaker and dancer (Rick Malambri), the dance crew contains a bunch of young, talented, barely differentiated dancers that also happen to be a good cross-section of various demographics. They’re mostly background for two romance plots. Malambri falls in infatuation with a new member of the dance crew (Sharni Vinson) while the friendship between Sevani and Stoner might become something more. Those plot threads are in turn just a device to draw us in to the competition, in which there’s substantial financial stakes and a rival dance crew that wants to win at all cost. That too, is ultimately just a backdrop for the dancing, just as it should be.

Under the direction of Jon Chu, the movie looks good, with the 3D actually enhancing the content in surprising and engaging ways. Sure, those dancers are dancing right at you, but the camera’s more locked down than usual. As a result of planning and shooting in 3D, and using it well, the shots and editing are mostly planned for clarity and impact. I loved the choreography and the chance to appreciate the skill on display. Of course, I would be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of the 3D effects, which had me smiling while leaning back to avoid all those dancers getting up in my face.

This is a movie that’s plenty entertaining, driven by nothing more than a desire to delight. The direction is stylish; for once I felt the 3D really enhanced a live-action experience rather than distracting. The performers are engaging and their dancing is excellent. It doesn’t even matter that the plot is all second-hand clichés and 3D gimmicks taped together in an earnestly silly way. Underneath all the popping and locking, behind the thumping, toe-tapping bass of the soundtrack, Step Up 3D feels like a throwback. It’s best sequence is actually set to the welcome sounds of Fred Astaire and features a long, unbroken shot of two characters dancing down a New York City sidewalk, paying homage to the steps and spirit of the old-school studio-era musicals. There’s a charm and innocence to a movie that simply wants to dazzle with dance and actually achieves it.