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Step Up 2 The Streets

(2008)

98 min. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. Director: Jon Chu. Cast: Briana Evigan, Adam G. Sevani, Mari Koda, Cassie, Telisha Shaw.

The enduringly popular dance film probably should have long ago become the province of documentary, a la Planet B-Boy. But there's something satisfying about melding drama to dance that keeps dance movies coming. Happily, the sequel Step Up 2 the Streets improves a bit on Step Up while showcasing some eye-popping moves and likeable characters.

Taking us back to Baltimore, Step Up 2 the Streets introduces the "410" crew, subway performance artists in masks who dance aggressively and tag subway stations (the news media brands their latest performance "an attack"). Andie (Briana Evigan) is a star within the group, but her guardian Sarah (Sonja Sohn of The Wire) has had enough of Andie's wayward ways. Facing eviction, Andie opens her ears to the advice of Step Up's Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum, in for two scenes). "Let me break it down for you," he says. She should go to the Maryland School for the Arts and get her head screwed on right. If she does, Sarah will let her stay.

Andie grudgingly agrees to give MSA a try. There, the school's world-class prick of a director Blake Collins (renowned dancer Will Kemp) sniffs, "She's just a street dancer." It's a supposed plot necessity of these dance movies to make one's dance style alienating, though surely any dance school worth its salt would acknowledge the importance of street dance, just as a student should acknowledge the importance of learning classical, foundational styles.  Anyway, Blake's younger brother, student Chase Collins (Robert Hoffman), takes notice of Andie, and a simmering romance begins to brew. Andie also gets a funny new pal in Robert Alexander III, a.k.a. "Moose" (Adam G. Sevani).

In keeping with the dance snobbery, the 410 kicks out Andie for devoting too much time to her schooling. Chase suggests that he and Andie start their own crew, made up of those who have "a really amazing talent that this school does't know what to do with." Enter a cast of characters introduced in quick boy-band vocabulary ("half hippie, half rhythmic rebel," "the quiet one," etc.) but defined by their unique dance talents. Rocky-style, their first performance is a disaster, met with a DJ's ultimate insult, "This ain't High School Musical!" Can this multicultural crew better themselves in time for annual underground dance showdown "The Streets"? As sure as Andie will follow her dead mom's advice "Just be yourself."

Despite the bogus conflict (which only escalates with ridiculous expulsion threats and a flipflopping Sarah), Step Up 2 the Streets is amiable enough, and depicts its romance and friendships with ease and reasonable realism. It's never entirely clear why Andie's absence from a group makes it immediately fall to pieces--she's a nice girl, but not a potent life force--but director Jon M. Chu stages some memorable set pieces, including the opening subway dance, a YouTube humiliation dubbed "The Prank," and the grand finale that literally takes "The Streets" to the streets (rainy ones, no less).

Certainly, the dancer-actors are enormously talented, which matters most to a film like this one. Performing a sometimes gymnastic hip-hop dance (with a backyard salsa party for variety), the cast makes good on Andie's climactically expressed democratic moral: "It's not what you've got; it's what you make of what you've got."

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