Gotta Kick It Up!

The acting is good and dancing is very good, however, the plot has problems. It is all about a group of middle school girls who guilt their biology teacher into coaching their dance team. From that point on they show just how selfish they can be, disobeying their coach and doing what they want when they feel like it and throw fits every time she says no to them. Overall this is a good movie with a bad message

This is another in a long line of feel-good films wherein a down-and-out school team overcomes a variety of difficulties and rises to victory. In this case, it's a dance team, and the draw here of course are the many dance numbers strung throughout the course of plot and action.

In addition to the dance teacher played by Susan Egan, whose long list of credits is one with which I'm mostly unfamiliar, are actors who appear later in more familiar roles, most notably the two leads, Camille Guaty (TV's "Prison Break" and "The Nine") who plays a dance diva who, under the tutelage of Julliard washout Heather Bartlett (the aforementioned Susan Egan), learns to become a team player, and America Ferrera ("The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"), star of the current TV hit, "Ugly Betty". The other actor of note here is Miguel Sandoval (currently the district attorney on TV's "Medium") who plays the tough-because-he-has-to-be school principal.

Although fun to watch, this movie doesn't pack the emotional power of some of its more famous counterparts, but serves as a stepping stone for some young actresses to go on to greater things.

Dot.com failure brings a white computer tech to try something entirely different - teaching 9th grade biology at an inner-city school where she is also drafted to coach a mixed bag of girls for the school's dance team. Mostly unlikeable characters. These supposed 9th grade girls, with no formal dance background are molded by their reluctant new coach into talented dancers in just a few weeks. The character of the teacher wasn't believable. While wearing a bad wig with a style from the 60's, she exhibited mostly blank expressions while allowing these generally rude, disrespectful and obnoxious girls to walk all over her. The girls consistently were rewarded for awful behavior. The main character of the "tough girl" was so annoying my teenage daughter and I could hardly keep from smacking the TV set in response to her antics. All in all, we could not identify with any of the characters and felt that a bad example was set by every character including the principal! Disney - what were you thinking?

This movie sends home many messages that may seem tired to some, but as a parent I always appreciate it when we see something on TV that allows me to start up a conversation with my kids about these issues.

My oldest daughter is a competitive gymnast and we saw this movie for the first time on the Disney Channel about a week before her first competition. This movie was both entertaining and a great way to help her understand the difference between being "the best" and "her best." Seeing the characters work hard to reach their goal - while still having fun - really helped her get in the right frame of mind to compete. My middle daughter is a dancer and when we watched it most recently, she enjoyed it from that view as well.

When my girls see this movie advertised, they will do whatever I ask them to do to ensure they can watch the whole thing!

I saw this movie the day that it premiered and I couldn't even watch all of it. Don't ask me why, but it just gets on my nerves with the acting of the students and every thing. The most I would give this movie on a scale of 1-10 would be 1 1/2, if even that.