"Streetdance," to an extent, shares the same problem as other movies about dance. When the first dance movie (which was probably "Save the Last Dance) appeared, it seemed fresh and original not least of all because of the choreographed dance routines. But now the genre of dance films can do little more than repeat the same formula and the result is a bit tedious. Incidentally I had a similar reaction to the martial arts films. The first Karate Kid was great from beginning to end. But the spectacle and energy of these martial arts film soon faded and even the attempts to spice up the genre with explosions and shoot outs did not quite work.
So does "Streetdance" suffer from this trend? Yes. But does "Streetdance" also make up for this fact? To a surprising degree, it does. There is not too much to be said for the plot which is riddled with so many clichés, including the climatic little dance battle at the end, that it appeared to be recycled from the "Step Up" genre. Yet it is fresh in some respects. Nichola Burley, for example, brought something new to her performance as the head of the streetdance group Carly who also has to help ballet dancers bring some fire to their performances. Nichola is genuinely likable, sweet and fun all at the same time and these traitsallow her to get away with saying some very ridiculous grandstanding speeches like (I'm paraphrasing) we are going to combine ballet and street dance and "create something beautiful." If a lesser actor, like Amanda Seyfried, Megan Fox or even Kat Dennings, spoke like that, it would never seem believable. But Nichola miraculously makes scenes like that work. Nichola is also aided along the way by other likable characters like the implied love interest Tomas (Richard Winsor). Charlotte Rampling, who played one of the heads of ballet school Helena Fitzgerald, delivers the kind of great performance one would expect from someone with her calibre, even though she is unfortunately not given much to say or do. "Streetdance" also has some memorable scenes, such as the one where two street dancers pretending to be manniquins communicate with a little boy, who is also a great street dancer, through the medium of dance. Another memorable scene has Carly and her co-worker turning their mundane job of making sandwiches into a dance routine, which was kind of neat.
6.3/10
