Movie Review: Step Up Revolution (2012)

Talk about the next level. Step Up Revolution is 99 minutes of pure unadulterated fun – a gigantic music video featuring talented DJs, street artists, special effects people, parkour and stunt men, as well as dancers of all styles and races (choreographed by Travis Wall), who incorporate many forms of art, with one form slowly and beautifully flowing into another, coming full force at the viewer in beautiful 3D. It is a leap from the previous movies in both ambition and execution, and it is a visual feast, from which it is impossible to look away.

Plot

The Mob is a flash dance crew that ‘terrorizes’ sunny Miami with its ‘inappropriate’ dance numbers in the middle of busy streets. The feisty dancers are looking to win a contest for 10 million YouTube hits, and to reach that goal they go further and further to blow the minds of the onlookers away, impregnating gallery paintings with pulsating life, and dancing under a shower of fake dollars. Sean, the leader of the Mob (Ryan Guzman), who has to make ends meet as a waiter, notices a modern-day Cinderella at a beach party. Her name is Emily (Kathryn McCormick); she can dance and that’s enough for him to feel a little tipsy. But Emily turns out to be the daughter of the real-estate developer (Peter Gallagher) who wants to take down the area to build another posh hotel. A compromise has to be reached – and what better way to reach it than to showcase the dancer’s extraordinary skills?

The Critics

The reviews just yesterday for Step Up Revolution were non-existent and now that they are here, they are poor: it’s one of those ‘silly kid movies’ with a ‘moronic plot’. It’s just seems really ironic to me how the issue of being invisible, faced by the characters in Step Up Revolution, is mirrored in reality with the movie’s reception. It’s funny to see how Magic Mike was so popular with the critics while Step Up Revolution gets panned, even though both movies are about people who want to follow their dreams in a troubled economy. The dancers in Step Up Revolution are outcasts, constantly criticized by family members and having to take on the worst jobs available because, believe it or not, most types of art take up a lot of time if one wants to be good, let alone be the best.

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Article Author: Sviatlana Piatakova

A writer, blogger, critic and lyricist from Minsk, Belarus, bitching about music and film, going out with a toddler and working from home, pop culture, sex, feminism, female chauvinism, alter egos, single motherhood, post apocalyptic dystopia and …

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