Making all the wrong steps as fusion goes awry
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Stomp The Yard
PG-13
Cast: Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Brian J White, Darrin Henson, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown
Director: Sylvain White
Genre: Drama, Musical
THINK Bring It On with men. And instead of pompoms, we are introduced to something called "stepping".
Being the blissful ignorant that I am, stepping has actually been around for many years now, decades even. And Wikipedia's definition of stepping, or step-dancing, "is a dancing tradition formalised in the traditional Black college fraternities and sororities consisting of choreographed dances performed at celebrations, ceremonies, performances and athletic events". Acrobats, gymnastics, clapping, stomping, chanting and dangerous stunts are all often a part of stepping.
As this is your humble reviewer's first encounter with fraternities and stepping, I found the combination of the two just short of being totally hilarious.
And I sure wasn't the only one in the cinema stifling laughter as we witnessed two clans (one the national champions of stepping and the other the underdog living in their shadows) parading around a university campus screaming at the top of their lungs, making very funny hand and arm movements, all for the sake of making a statement.
Especially when the leader cries out some inaudible words and his followers immediately, and in a very synchronised manner, swing their arms about and end up with a pose.
Almost like a bad cross between army soldiers and the very silly Power Rangers, making rugby war cries look god-like.
Imagine one clan, the champions, calling themselves the Wolves, howling every time they initiate a challenge and the other, the underdog Pythons, always posing with their arms forming the shape of a standing cobra, hissing no less. Then, imagine all this happening at your university I'd probably study elsewhere.
DJ, our protagonist played by Columbus Short, is a hip-hop street dancer from Los Angeles who is made to enrol in a fictional Truth University in Atlanta after his brother (Chris Brown) is killed in a gang fight.
On his first day he learns that the university is rich in traditions, with two rival sororities that excel in stepping. Initially, he doesn't want to have anything to do with stepping, but all that changes when he sets eyes on college beauty April (Meagan Good), who is dating one of the step-dance's best.
From here on, predictability takes over once again with the whole boy-meets-girl storyline so don't be expecting any real substance from this movie, which you shouldn't even be contemplating with a title like that. Apart from some of the more seasoned actors like Brian J White who plays Python's leader, any "serious" acting is out the window as we see an unknown cast consisting of MTV favourites Brown and Ne-Yo.
And Short, a dance choreographer when he's not acting, doesn't seem to be emotionally proficient as his facial expression is probably as rich as 50cent in all his music videos (watching Short does indeed sometimes remind me of the now defunct rapper).
For a movie about dancing, there seems to be a huge lack of it. And when there is, it looks more weird than spectacular as the director tries to infuse hip-hop with stepping.
I blame the director for failing to capture the essence in the dances and not being able to deliver them properly, resulting in a very confusing and unclear fusion of the two.
And because clarity wasn't there, an overly enthusiastic deejay is always in the background describing what is going on and then leading the viewers into thinking that one dance move trumps the other when they seemed more subject to individual taste. Especially in the finale where I thought the Wolves actually had a more fun and engaging routine compared to the very safe and boring one the Python-heroes had.
Stomp The Yard, being the feel-good teen movie that it is, has the typical formula to keep the story going, but that's where it stops. Though the athleticism spirit may be there, the importance of it was not. Not even when the protagonist stepped into a "hall of fame" showing pictures of Martin Luther King and Michael Jordan among others as members of the fraternity, it just seems like another pathetic excuse to make the whole story more important or honorific than it really was.
While Bring It On did much better with the synchronised fluidity and You Got Served had better hip-hop break-dancing, Stomp The Yard was just sadly caught in a dilemma between the two, failing to capture or deliver anything.
Reviewer's Rating: 5.5/10
The Brunei Times
PG-13
Cast: Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Brian J White, Darrin Henson, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown
Director: Sylvain White
Genre: Drama, Musical
THINK Bring It On with men. And instead of pompoms, we are introduced to something called "stepping".
Being the blissful ignorant that I am, stepping has actually been around for many years now, decades even. And Wikipedia's definition of stepping, or step-dancing, "is a dancing tradition formalised in the traditional Black college fraternities and sororities consisting of choreographed dances performed at celebrations, ceremonies, performances and athletic events". Acrobats, gymnastics, clapping, stomping, chanting and dangerous stunts are all often a part of stepping.
As this is your humble reviewer's first encounter with fraternities and stepping, I found the combination of the two just short of being totally hilarious.
And I sure wasn't the only one in the cinema stifling laughter as we witnessed two clans (one the national champions of stepping and the other the underdog living in their shadows) parading around a university campus screaming at the top of their lungs, making very funny hand and arm movements, all for the sake of making a statement.
Especially when the leader cries out some inaudible words and his followers immediately, and in a very synchronised manner, swing their arms about and end up with a pose.
Almost like a bad cross between army soldiers and the very silly Power Rangers, making rugby war cries look god-like.
Imagine one clan, the champions, calling themselves the Wolves, howling every time they initiate a challenge and the other, the underdog Pythons, always posing with their arms forming the shape of a standing cobra, hissing no less. Then, imagine all this happening at your university I'd probably study elsewhere.
DJ, our protagonist played by Columbus Short, is a hip-hop street dancer from Los Angeles who is made to enrol in a fictional Truth University in Atlanta after his brother (Chris Brown) is killed in a gang fight.
On his first day he learns that the university is rich in traditions, with two rival sororities that excel in stepping. Initially, he doesn't want to have anything to do with stepping, but all that changes when he sets eyes on college beauty April (Meagan Good), who is dating one of the step-dance's best.
From here on, predictability takes over once again with the whole boy-meets-girl storyline so don't be expecting any real substance from this movie, which you shouldn't even be contemplating with a title like that. Apart from some of the more seasoned actors like Brian J White who plays Python's leader, any "serious" acting is out the window as we see an unknown cast consisting of MTV favourites Brown and Ne-Yo.
And Short, a dance choreographer when he's not acting, doesn't seem to be emotionally proficient as his facial expression is probably as rich as 50cent in all his music videos (watching Short does indeed sometimes remind me of the now defunct rapper).
For a movie about dancing, there seems to be a huge lack of it. And when there is, it looks more weird than spectacular as the director tries to infuse hip-hop with stepping.
I blame the director for failing to capture the essence in the dances and not being able to deliver them properly, resulting in a very confusing and unclear fusion of the two.
And because clarity wasn't there, an overly enthusiastic deejay is always in the background describing what is going on and then leading the viewers into thinking that one dance move trumps the other when they seemed more subject to individual taste. Especially in the finale where I thought the Wolves actually had a more fun and engaging routine compared to the very safe and boring one the Python-heroes had.
Stomp The Yard, being the feel-good teen movie that it is, has the typical formula to keep the story going, but that's where it stops. Though the athleticism spirit may be there, the importance of it was not. Not even when the protagonist stepped into a "hall of fame" showing pictures of Martin Luther King and Michael Jordan among others as members of the fraternity, it just seems like another pathetic excuse to make the whole story more important or honorific than it really was.
While Bring It On did much better with the synchronised fluidity and You Got Served had better hip-hop break-dancing, Stomp The Yard was just sadly caught in a dilemma between the two, failing to capture or deliver anything.
Reviewer's Rating: 5.5/10
The Brunei Times
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