Dance Flick

Copies

One wonders about the appeal of parody movies, taking genres that happen to be the flavour of the moment, and then adding doses of comedic spoofs into something of an abomination of a film, very much like a patchwork Frankenstein brought to life by the need to make fun of everything. While I could have swore off such films with the likes of the very unbelievably bad film Meet the Spartans, somehow the need to laugh after a rigourous in-camp training, and wanting to give the Wayan brothers a chance as I've enjoyed their Scary Movie spoofs, brought me to their Dance Flick.

The Wayan clan banded together to make the film, finding their blood relations from acting and directing right down to coming up with the story and producing it. At times I wonder just how one can find the funds for these kinds of films, especially when recent outputs like Superhero Movie and Disaster Movie were really, really bad, and when you read of people conscientiously wanting to avoid such films so that they result in poor box office, and will never get made again. Unless of course there are so many people out there who are just craving for laughter, of any kind.

There's no prize for guessing the films that the Wayans had decided to spoof. With the recent dance flicks like Step Up, Step Up 2 the Streets, and musicals such as Fame, Hairspray and High School Musical, there's no lack of source material to base the spoofs on, which extends its reach to films such as Black Snake Moan even. The art is of course to try and piece everything together for some semblance of a storyline in order for it to work.

The liberal application of lazy narrative glue comes in the form of borrowing the backbone from the Step Up movies, where you have a wannabe dancer Megan (Shoshana Bush) enrolling herself to school to master her craft and find confidence to dance again, while street dancer Thomas (Damon Wayans Jr) finds a common romantic bond with her. One needs to dance to fulfill her life's ambition, while the other just needs to repay his debts after his street dance circuit attempt with his crew resulted in tragedy (of the comedic sorts).

That basically sums up the story, as very random scenes get strung together played just for laughs. You can guess the quality of such scenes from the get go, where toilet humour was the first off the blocks, and set the stage for many more to come. with political correctness getting thrown out of the window in expected terms. One wonders too about the license that the Wayans have in telling many racists jokes about their own race, and also the many celebrity jibes from Britney to Halle to Lindsay that find their way into the scenes through many one liners. Sexual innuendos, and at times very in-your-face explicit display of sexual organs become part and parcel of the shock-and-awe strategy to elicit cheap laughter as well.

If you're seriously game for some laughs no matter what the quality is, or probably can laugh at anything the Wayans throw on screen, then you'll survive Dance Flick. If you prefer your humour to be witty, then this is obviously not the comedic film for you.