ALL THE STEP UP MOVIES MOVIE

Moose has just unwittingly embarrassed another crew with his dance moves on the streets of New York, and that villainous crew is about to get revenge by cornering the kid in an empty restroom. My favorite preposterous Step Up sequence comes in Step Up 3-D, when the fiercely beloved funnyman Moose (Adam Sevani) is wandering into a bathroom ( watch here beginning at the 3:50 mark). And the tempo of the music is never, ever slow. You can pull off expert choreography on top of cars, in science labs, in art galleries and in office buildings. In Step Up world, all of life’s problems can be solved by a nice crew pulling off cool stunts.

ALL THE STEP UP MOVIES MOVIE

No one should ever take the plot of a Step Up movie seriously, though, because the franchise’s creators (including long-running producer Adam Shankman and original director Jon M. These movies are technically “dramas,” and there are always moments two-thirds of the way through when the hero believes that, as hard as they have danced, their dancing didn’t go hard enough. I have to stress the importance of silliness in the Step Up franchise.

And in 2010, Step Up 3-D was the most fun yet: lots of the best characters from The Streets were back, and although the plot was almost absurd in its implausibility, the dancing was gleefully arranged, from a single-shot “Singin’ In The Rain” homage to a battle between crews improbably called the Pirates and the House of Samurai. I re-watched the original Step Up and started to enjoy the nuances of Tatum’s stone-faced lead performance. The characters in Step Up 2: The Streets were more engaging, the soundtrack had multiple Missy Elliott songs, and the final dance sequence - a crew battle for the underground competition ‘The Streets’ - was jaw-dropping. These movies kept coming out… and I started liking them. The key ingredients to a Step Up movie quickly became clear: something-to-prove hero, urban setting, exposed six-packs, Flo Rida music. A quick-to-produce, crazy-profitable franchise was born. The spectacularly titled sequel, Step Up 2: The Streets, was originally supposed to head straight to video, like the You Got Served and Bring It On franchises before it, but Disney instead decided to quietly release Step Up 2: The Streets on a sleepy February weekend in 2008, just 18 months after the original Step Up was released, and the sequel grossed $150 million worldwide. Yet the film’s $12 million budget and $114 million international gross made a follow-up inevitable. Step Up was a hit in the U.S., but nowhere near a cultural phenomenon. He played a disadvantaged kid who ends up performing community service at an arts school and teaching those fussy ballet students a thing or two about street dancing Step Up was a fish-out-of-water story that had been told by Save The Last Dance five years earlier. The first Step Up, released in August 2006, was a forgettable Channing Tatum vehicle before Tatum was a recognizable name. But save yourself the service charge and see it in 2D, because the 3D action is negligible and unnecessary to enjoy the choreographed scenes.I understand that the Step Up movies are widely derided as dance shlock. In addition to the dances, the fifth installment provides the added value of starring a Who's Who of former Step Up performers, and it's genuinely fun to see them dance together, particularly the charming Moose, the tough-but-vulnerable choreographer Andie (who looks and sounds like Demi Moore's little sister), and supporting crew members like the Santiago twins. But, as poorly acted movies go, at least this franchise has some pretty spectacular dance sequences, in both rehearsal scenes and the big competition acts. Every single one involves an underdog group of dancers (or couple) trying to dance beyond people's expectations at a competition that could change their lives. The truth is that no one should see any of the Step Up movies (with the exception of perhaps the first one, which now has the novelty of starring young Channing Tatum and his wife, Jenna Dewan) expecting nuanced acting or a touching plot.

All the step up movies