Step Up 3-D however can’t
There are three screenwriters credited for Step Up 3-D and you have to wonder if they were all in the same room at any point during the making of this movie. Much of the time it feels like two versions of the same movie layered atop one another. First we meet Moose (Adam Sevani) an other-worldly Jonas Brother-Justin Bieber hybrid. He’s an engineering student who secretly longs to be a dancer and who is semi-in-love with his best friend Camille (Alyson Stoner). Then there’s Luke (Rick Malambri) a dancer who secretly longs to be a filmmaker who is semi-in-love with a mysterious woman who not-so-secretly longs for him to be a filmmaker.
Movies like this require a lot of longing.
Along with about 20 other people they live in a warehouse where all they do is dance — there is no eating or non-rhythmic walking and very little sleeping. There is also no working which explains why they are about to be evicted from said warehouse. What it doesn’t explain however is the wall of Nike shoes perfectly on display as they would be at Foot Locker or the thousands of dollars worth of Blackberries and Apple computers that the cast has acquired. Anyway the “biggest dance battle ever” is coming up and the $100000 on the line would solve the eviction problem.
At this point it’s not hard to figure out the rest.
A movie like Step Up 3-D should be efficient and sleek. The dialogue should be minimal and mechanical directing viewers to the next dance-off. But with several character arcs reinforcing the exact same message it’s awfully hard to be efficient. There are no fewer than six scenes in which string sections swell the actors employ the 100-metre stare and they blandly remind each other that they can do whatever they set their minds to.
And then there’s the 3-D. Enough has been said about the downfalls of hastily adding 3D in post-production; the colours are dimmer and there are often only one or two scenes in which the technology is actually employed.
In the case of Step Up 3-D the overly conscious use of 3-D is doubly distracting. The dancers stop mid-battle to reach into the audience and make microscopic hand gestures that don’t resemble dancing at all. Truthfully it’s much more impressive when they settle back into the screen and get back to the helicopter.
It’s easy to make fun of a movie like Step Up 3-D but it’s even easier to shut your brain off and enjoy it. Even in that mindset though this movie will test your patience.
