Review: Step Up 2 the Streets

Step Up didn’t front, but Step Up 2 the Streets is a poseur.

Step Up 2 the Streets
Photo: Touchstone Pictures

Anne Fletcher’s Step Up didn’t front, but Step Up 2 the Streets is a poseur. The first film’s dance sequences were seductive and the poor-meets-rich and black-meets-white skirmishes felt precarious, the result of filmmakers advancing an art of dance and sweet but not illegitimate social purview without studio interference. But when a film like Step Up becomes a cash cow and a studio (here, Disney) takes a more vested interest in the making of its sequel, the result feels tamed. This basically goes against the purported message of Step Up 2 the Streets, which concerns Andie (Briana Evigan) falling out with her underground crew, known as 410, after Tyler (Channing Tatum, literally stepping it up by implementing a trampoline into a dance-off) facilitates her admission into the MSA academy. From the dregs of the school, she and the banal Chase (Robert Hoffman, sporting an apt Voltron tee in one scene) form a new crew that wants to take their freestyle to the streets. (Their moves are serviceable, but mostly they’re good at producing and editing a witty you-got-punk’d video that plays up their outsider status while secretly foregrounding the oblivious gaze of 410’s leader.) Oddly, most the film’s battles take place indoors, and when they do move to the streets, they operate not in the interest of confronting Baltimore’s social wails but to get everyone ass-soaking wet in order to (a) distract from the fact that Andie’s posse is really not as good as 410 and (b) prove to doubters that these freestylers are not trying to hide their skillz, or lack thereof, beneath baggy clothes. Okay, so the dancing is sick, as is much of the soundtrack, but the plot moves quicker than the geeky Adam G. Sevani’s limbs, and between the old-hat freestyle-is-just-as-serious-as-ballet agenda, god-awful power montages, and requisite why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along homilies, you begin to side with Andie when she says she feels as if she’s landed in an episode of The Hills.

Score: 
 Cast: Briana Evigan, Robert Hoffman, Adam G. Sevani, Cassie Ventura, Danielle Polanco, Christopher Scott, Mari Koda, Janelle Cambridge, Luis Rosado, Harry Shum Jr., Lajon Dantzler, Telisha Shaw, Black Thomas  Director: Jon M. Chu  Screenwriter: Toni Ann Johnson, Karen Barna  Distributor: Touchstone Pictures  Running Time: 98 min  Rating: PG-13  Year: 2008  Buy: Video, Soundtrack

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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