Let me start off this review by first saying that I absolutely hated the first Step Up movie. I mean, I REALLY hated it!!! For a standard teen dance movie, I did not think the dancing was all that impressive. Don’t even get me started on the acting. I know that you do not go to see a dance film for the acting, but when the acting and dancing are both mediocre at best, than what is the point of even watching it? For Step Up 2: The Streets they kicked it up a notch by having a few colorful characters and including some impressive dance numbers. It still was not a very good movie, but a huge improvement over the first film. Now we get Step Up 3D and I have to tell you that this would be the first film in the franchise that I would recommend you go out and see.
The first thing that I liked about the 3rd installment is that they brought back one of the 2nd film’s minor but most entertaining characters named Moose (Adam G. Sevani) and planted him in the front of the story. He is what connects the 2nd & 3rd movie. Adam gives his character Moose so much life and he is fun to watch. To me, some of the best street dancers I have seen are a lot like Moose, very geeky looking until the moment you see him dance and he takes you by surprise. Even after seeing him in the last film, I totally forgot how great this kid is.
The film starts off with Moose and his best friend Camille (Alyson Stoner) starting their freshman year at NYU. As Moose’s parents drop him off at college, his father tells Moose that he is happy that he stopped with all that dance nonsense and is now focusing on his engineering major. Within a 2 minutes time Moose stumbles into a street dance battle and winds up out dancing the opponent. This of course impresses a bunch of onlookers including Luke (Rick Malambri who also can pass for a Channing Tatum clone). Rick is the leader of a dance crew and wants to recruit Moose to help his team win a huge dance battle that will help save their home. Moose agrees as long as it won’t get in the way of school.
Rick also meets Natalie (Sharni Vinson) a beautiful young dancer that catches his attention in the night club he owns that’s directly below his home. Moose, Natalie, and Rick are also joined by some other interesting & funny characters that form their dance crew. Including a set of twins that steal every scene they are in.
As you can tell from the title Step Up 3D, the movie is actually filmed in 3D (none of that converted crap here) and it’s used in a really fun way. A lot of the old school 3-D tricks were used by having things fly at your face and I was just fine with that. It was nice to see a 3-D movie that was actually in 3-D. The best uses for the technology were during the dance battles. The dancers would just get right in your face and you felt like they were going to slap you. It almost felt like the audience was the one that they were battling. I really liked that effect.
I would not call Step Up 3D a good film but for a dance movie, it was really entertaining. It felt like they tried a little harder to give the audience a good time. I did find the running time a little long at just under 2 hours but I would still recommend this movie just on the level of dancing and the great use of 3D.
By: Marc Ferman
