Monday, March 24, 2008

Step Up

You may gather from these posts that I have frittered my long(ish) weekend away watching movies. You may be right. But careful how you use the word 'frittered' because this might seem to suggest I've wasted my time and to suggest I wasted two hours of my life watching the (unintentionally?) hilarious Step Up 2: The Streets would be very, very wrong. In fact this movie is such a classic I've decided to use it as an instructive example to all other would-be cheesfests to show you how it's really done.

1. Start with a moody voice over on top of some gritty scenes of 'the streets'. This is not merely the only chance you will have to display any sense of realism it will also effectively dispense with any need for plot or characterisation for at least the first hour of the movie, thus enabling it to become little more than a glorified rap video.

2. Indisperse dialogue with long dance sequences, ideally when least expected. The more complex, tightly choreographed and improbable the better. Ridiculous masks are good. Oh and turn on the fake rain anytime anyone so much as thinks about dancing outside. Assuming by 'anyone' you mean a hot chick in a white top.

3. Hot boys onscreen longer than two minutes are required to take their shirts off. Unless they are supposed to be evil.

4. Hot girls (read: every flipping girl in the movie, unless she is supposed to be evil) onscreen are required to a) tear the lower half of her top off, b) wear a gravity defying push-up bra, c) spontaneously decide to wear a hat half over her eyes in order to allow her dance double to step in for the trickier dance sequences.

5. If the studio REALLY requires the main character's love interest to be played by a blonde-haired blue-eyed boy so bland he may as well be a mop in a funny hat do be sure to wedge a full blown hottie into another part of the movie, ostensibly as an arsehole-with-a-secret-heart-of-gold but really so the rest of us can imagine him tearing his short open in the fake rain while back-up dancers straddle his torso.

6. Make Step Up 3. Please.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I so want to give you grief about having seen, not only Step Up, but Step Up 2: The Streets. I do. But I feel like I don't have a leg to stand on - or, dare I say it - I don't think I could Step Up to the plate on the basis of my cinematic choices over the weekend. Suffice to say, Horton Hears a Who/27 Dresses at the Kingsley drive-in was not the be all and end all of movie double features. Did I mention how bad 27 Dresses was? I tried to erase the memory by getting horribly drunk on Sunday, but that pathetic excuse for cinema is burned into my mind.......

my name is kate said...

Hah yeah at least I got hot boys dancing in the rain - YOU just got a chick flick in a car...

Bolton said...

just quietly, this is now my favourite movie of all time. It had everything, everything, I required.

my name is kate said...

Tell me about it. and theres no need to be quiet about it - you are among friends.