If you are familiar with my work, or have spoken to me for more than five minutes, then you already know that I am an enthusiastic fan of the Step Up franchise, that deliciously groovy bastion of pop ‘n’ lock neo-sincerity created by Duane Adler but later refined into pure showmanship by director Jon M. Chu.
The latter movies in the franchise, and this summer’s Step Up All In appears to be following suit, emphasized the artificial concoctions of their dance movie plots – stopping a snooty hotel magnate from buying their parents’ land, defending their honor in “The Streets” – by taking them dead seriously, but the original Step Up, the only one actually co-written by Adler, was more interested in the starcross’d chemistry of its stars than explaining why a moose is dance-fighting a samurai. So it’s no surprise that Make Your Move, Adler’s first dance film behind the camera, borrows from nothing less than William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet to bolster its tidy, slightly goofy story of tap-dancing rebels who unite their feuding, club owner siblings with only the power of love, YouTube and clicky, clacky shoes.
You’ve got to admire the testicular fortitude of a filmmaker who tries to make tap-dancing look like a hip-hop revolution. Duane Adler damn near succeeds. Make Your Move’s early choreography fails to inspire but his two leads, dancer (with the stars) Derek Hough and singer BoA, are perfectly cast: her as a mischievous, charismatic independent woman with a bright future ahead of her, and him as a bland boytoy who only comes alive on the dance floor. When the plot finally brings them together the rest of the movie falls out of the spotlight to make room for talented physical performers whose romance inevitably culminates in a fully choreographed dance fuck that almost compensates for Make Your Move’s many, many other flaws.
Like many films of its Spotified ilk, Make Your Move makes no apologies for just how cliché-riddled its plot is. There are two clubs in Brooklyn, you see. Their owners used to be partners but now they hate and conspire to ruin each other with slanderous YouTube videos (those bastards). Bobby (Hough) and Aya (BoA) are the little siblings of these Tapulets and Krunkagues who fall prey to Aya’s stockbroker stalker Michael (Jefferson Brown), the type of unapologetic megadouche who spends the last act of the movie rocking a bright pink shirt with a couger-spotted inlay. Bobby is an ex-con too. He served time for dancing… obviously.
With the exception of BoA, a damned charismatic actor whose natural charms could carry a movie all by their lonesome, the cast of Make Your Move is pretty uniformly terrible whenever their mouths move. But that’s not why they’re here: they’re here to move the rest of their bodies, and most of the time it’s a real joy to watch. Adler doesn’t let all of his choreography play in seamless oners but the editing never looks like it’s trying to hide a poorly rehearsed routine. It’s a pity his mediocre soundtrack fails elevate Make Your Move’s dance steps, but it never completely ruins the experience.
In fact, there’s so much keeping Make Your Move from legitimate greatness that it’s almost hard to recommend. The whole routine averages out to near total mediocrity, but the glowing drumstick finale, tweeted as the greatest thing ever but clearly just a pretty good show, encapsulates the whole thing pretty nicely. Make Your Move doesn’t move nearly as smoothly as anyone on screen thinks it does, but at least it takes us along with it. It’s a step down from Step Up 3D but a step way up from the Adler-originated original.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
