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The Following is an inside look at the movie “Step Up 2 The Streets” as written by Daniel Ferro on February 12. Daniel is a professional web designer and b-boy who served as an extra on the set of the movie.

For those that hate to read long reviews, I got to see an early screening of the movie. I’ll summarize it here then elaborate:

1. Good: Surprisingly funny, with good music video-style choreography. Decent acting.

2. Bad: Storyline is as unoriginal as it gets, there is nothing ’street’ about any of the dancing or clothes or people, there is next to no breakdancing.

3. Ugly: Most of what you see in the trailer that is jaw-dropping good is not in the final movie.

The Dancing
What was immediately obvious to me, and made me so very sad, is they cut out just about all the breakdancing. They went out and hired some of the United State’s best breakdancing talent, K-Mel, Crumbs, Rainen, Shorty, Luigi, Toys, Cricket, and they barely got to breakdance. They were basically reduced to being in an NSYNC video, their individual talents wasted.

In addition, this movie is supposedly about ’street’ dancing in Baltimore. There is already a street dance native to Baltimore, It’s called Baltimore Club. The closest example I could find is this youtube video, but only the first guy to go out. And there are far better dancers..at least that video will get non-Baltimore people a taste of what its about. THAT is street dancing in Baltimore. And street dancing in general is bboying, no contest. A true Baltimore ‘Street’ competition would feature Bmore club dancing and bboying. Not Christina Aguilera music video dancing.

Why does this happen? Why do all these recent dance movies end up looking like a 2-hour Usher video? Here is a brief history:

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