If you’re like me and have exhausted your tolerance for TV shows and films featuring attractive, talented but sometimes blighted youngsters with a nice line in tunes and dance moves you’ll love this film.
A spoof of just about every dance film that’s gone before (Wikipedia has a seemingly exhaustive list of the films and scenes being parodied), the has the obligatory plot line of new girl Megan White (Shoshana Bush) moving into a new area where she meets new friends and overcomes her reluctance to dance brought about by the death of her mother.
Everything follows pretty much along the lines you’d expect, we encounter familiar character types (decent-at-heart Thomas who is under the influence of a gang lord, single mum Charity who could have just walked off the Jerry Springer show), the kids experience a few knocks and learn something about themselves before the inevitable feel good ending.
It’s a pretty broad brush affair but the gags are well written and performed with no clunkers coming to mind.
Dance Flick sails through my highly personal ‘spoof test’ – if you strip out the gags scenes could this be the real thing? A big ‘yes’ for Johnny English (looks and feels like a dozen actual Bond films), a big ‘no’ for True Lies (self explanatory).
Remove the comedy face pulling and a few of the gags and it’s easily possible to imagine Dance Flick being touted as ‘this summer’s feel-good movie’ supported with a lavish, saccharin laced ad campaign.
The perfect film to see before the latest series of X-Factor with its cast of wannabes starts this weekend!
Dance Flick opens and UK cinemas on August 21st
