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Friday
22May2009

Movie Review - 'Dance Flick'

DateFriday, May 22, 2009 at 12:02AM
Dance Flick

Starring Shoshana Bush, Damon Wayans, Jr., Essence Atkins, and Amy Sedaris
Directed by Damien Dante Wayans
Rated PG-13

danceflickposter.jpg The good thing about the new Wayans family spoof, Dance Flick, is you'll know within 60 seconds whether or not it's for you. A dance battle begins the movie, with two teams of dancers throwing out their best moves in an effort to outduel each other.

Roughly half a minute into the film, a dancer slides across the floor, leg hiked in the air, and urinates on a competitor. Some fifteen seconds later, another dancer contorts his body and accidentally shoves his head up his own ass.

You either think that's funny or you don't. If you think it's funny, then your ship has come in. And you're way too easily enteratined. However, if it's not up your alley, the rest of the 80-something minutes here won't offer you much of a respite.

Dance Flick takes aim at a genre with few highlights, the teens-gotta-dance movies like Step Up, You Got Served, and How She Move. The idea worked when the Wayans brothers did the first Scary Movie, but almost not at all in any of the many variations since. Case in point: How bad does Disaster Movie have to be when Dance Flick is clearly superior?

The genre is a great fit for satire, because so many of the movies execute the exact same plot, but that doesn't mean it's a fit for great satire. Of course, there's no evidence that great satire was ever an intention for the Wayans family, all 11 of them, according to the credits. The one component of the movie that works is Essence Atkins, who does more with the best friend role than I expected, and she's certainly funnier than anything around her.

Perhaps I'm dating myself here, but I don't think I am: Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in a ten-month period in 1974. Both films are in the top 13 of the AFI list of the greatest American comedies ever made. Both received at least two Oscar nominations, and they finished as the second- and third-highest-grossing movies of the year. Only The Towering Inferno made more money.

Even though those films are 35 years old, they're still funnier and more relevant than any spoof made in the last decade. A great joke will always be funny. Bad jokes never will be. So why are all of these new spoof movies littered with lazy, pointless jokes? What could possibly be the draw of making movies this bad?

If the answer is because they're easier for five - count 'em, five - Wayanses to write, then go home and let somebody who prefers to do good work take up the cause. If it's because the audience expects them to be bad, then shame on the audience. They don't deserve better.

But it couldn't hurt to try, right?

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Well let's not take things TOO far. I maintain in the right context a guy with his head shoved up his own ass might be hilarious. (I.E. a documentary of Dane Cook having it done to himself totaly against his will) Just not in these "_________ Movie" pieces of schlock. There has to be more, but let us not dismiss such an act out of hand.

Friday, May 22, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterBig Shawn

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