Dance Flick

by KYW's Bill Wine 

Where there's a will, there's a Wayans movie.  White Chicks, Little Man, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, and four -- count 'em, four! -- installments in the Scary Movie franchise.
 
Lots of genre parodies, which is not necessarily to say lots of laughs.  But certainly a few. 

With regard to the Wayans clan's body of work, however, let's put it this way: quantity has in general been kicking quality's butt.   Or, to put it another way, with the Wayans way, parody does not imply parity.
 
And now the comedic moviemaking clan has gone multi-generational.  The baton is being passed from one Wayans generation to another, so sons and nephews dominate this trip, with the blessing and cameo participation of the Wayans fathers and uncles.
   
Directed by debuting Damien Dante Wayans and written and produced by Keenen Ivory, Shawn, Marlon, Craig, and Damien Wayans, Dance Flick is a sendup of competitive urban dance flicks -- think Step Up, Step Up 2 the Streets, Save the Last Dance, and Save the Last Dance 2.  Not to mention other dance movies like Fame, High School Musical, Dirty Dancing, and Hairspray, and other non-dance movies like Ray, Twilight, and even Titanic -- all of which are referenced.
 
This one has a "What hasn't been spoofed yet?" feel to it rather than a "What Must Be Spoofed?" feel -- as if it were dreamt up at a family gathering with the knowledge that nearly every idea expressed in this family ends up on the movie screen.
 
The Wayans work remains -- as it has been since the Wayans guys emerged from the world of television sketch comedy, on "In Living Color" -- aimed at the short-attention-span crowd, using a machine-gun-spray style as anything-for-a-laugh bits are thrown against the wall to see what sticks.
 
In this case, a little of it does stick -- and tickle.  But a lot more of it doesn't. 

Dance Flick has the feel of a fraternity party with no adult supervision.  Oh, there's considerable exuberance and a genial tone, but not much in the way of discipline or thoughtful revision.
 
Megan White (Shoshana Bush) is an aspiring ballerina from the burbs who, following the death of her single mom, enrolls in Musical High School, where she meets Thomas Uncles (Damon Wayans Jr.), a street dancer from the wrong side of the tracks.  They bond and team up to enter a dance competition because he needs the prize money and she needs to overcome her fear of dancing.
 
But enough about plot -- and because that's essentially all there is anyway, merely a clothesline to hang the jokes on.  

Which would be fine, except that you get the feeling that in every scene, whoever made the final decision opted for the most obvious joke, gag, or bit -- the one the audience would have thought of themselves if given the chance.
 
Now no one's saying that every laugh in a sendup must come from something startlingly original, but it would be refreshing if the occasional choice proved subtle or oblique or not quite so obvious.
 
Still, the bottom line in this kind of scattershot spoof with no coherent narrative is always the hit-to-miss ratio.  That is, we acknowledge the fact that there are a few laughs, but do the highlights outnumber the lowlights?
 
The answer in this case is no, they don't -- not even close.
 
Which is why the mercifully brief running time seems more a case of not having enough watchable material to fill an hour-and-a-half feature than the desire to move things briskly along.
 
So we'll save the last dance for 1½ stars out of 4 as the Wayans weigh in on spoof-spawning dance movies for a not-easily-offended audience.  Dance Flick is a takeoff that doesn't take off.