I liked this movie a helluva lot more when it was called ‘Breakin’.  The only thing that could have been done to make this movie any good was for it not to have been made.  Seriously.  This thing was so regurgitated, so unoriginal, so tired that you have to wonder which Touchstone exec thought it was good idea to greenlight this crap.  Whichever one it was should join me on the unemployment line.

Right here, right now I’m going to go ahead and say, and hope the film community is listening; ‘Take the Lead’ closes the book on wrong side of the track dance movies.  Flashdance,  Save the last Dance, Breakin’, Breakin’ 2:  Electric Boogooloo and a host of others… Jesus Lord we’ve been here!

As I have already said, if you saw ‘Breakin’ back in eighty whatever, then you’ve seen this one, almost to the letter.  Uptown girl (Jenna Dewann) studying dance in a prestigious arts high school with a snippy mom is preparing for something called the senior showcase.  Downtown boy (Channing Tatum) who street dances, breaks into the school with his number one homey and his bratty little brother and wrecks the place.  No particular reason, but they also steal cars, so they’re some bad kids.  So the downtown boy gets caught totally wrecking the place and gets sentenced to 200 hours of community service at the place he wrecked.  I’m almost positive that this could never happen in reality, but everything about this tired film was so false that it really doesn’t matter anymore.  The uptown girls dance partner gets hurt, so instead of using one the dancers from a school filled with trained dancers, she chooses the Downtown boy sweeping the floors because he can dance somewhat and most

importantly he can support her in her jumps.  I’d say Jenna Dewann stands maybe 5’2” and might weigh 98 pounds.  Yet this is the only guy in city who can lift her.  There is more crap shoved in front of the viewer to step in, but believe me, I’d be wasting your time talking about it because YOU’VE SEEN IT ALREADY!!!  And you’ve seen it done better.

You know what, I’m getting pissed off even having to type about this.  If I hadn’t already put Piñata Island in the Garbage Corner, this would definitely be there, and this is way worse than Pinata Island, but that flick did some bad things which forced me to put it in the Garbage Corner.

Look, if you’re going to retread a movie do something at least a little different with it, or at least amp it up 10x so the lack of originality won’t be so obvious.  ‘Take the Lead’ wasn’t that great but it did have Antonio Banderas in it who could burp the Star Bangled Banner and make it sound like Whitman prose, and the dancing for that movie was electric.  But for this dance movie, there weren’t nearly enough dance scenes!  They apparently thought the story would carry the movie, but how could they have possibly of thought that?  Didn’t they read the script?

Good things about ‘Step Up’.  Jenna Dewann is supremely hot.  Just last week we established that fact in our review of ‘Tamara’ which was better than this, but still sucked.  We also suggested in ‘Tamara’ that at twenty-six, maybe Jenna shouldn’t be playing high school seniors either.  The music was pretty good, and if you like modern pop, you may want to buy the soundtrack, but still avoid the movie.  Please.  The dancing was pretty good, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it.

The badness of it all is too numerous to mention.  If you did see ‘Breakin’ some twenty plus years ago, that would make you around thirty something, or so.  I’m guessing the audience for this is between 6 months and 15 years old and Breakin’ isn’t on their radar.  Do yourself a favor and just rent Breakin’.  Please.  ‘Suffering so you don’t have to’ has never rung so true.