I’m convinced everything sounds better with a British accent. Streetdance 3D is the British 3D version of Step Up in reverse. In Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini’s formula dance picture, a rouge instructor at a prestigious London ballet school (played by Charlotte Rampling) brings in street dancers to inject her stiff ballerinas with some life.
Nichola Burley stars as Carly, by day a gorgeous sandwich shop delivery girl, by mid-afternoon and evening an ambitious street dancer. Of coarse she’s been dumped by a sleazy boyfriend and rebounds with you guest it, one of her ballet students who is a stock leading man type. Much is recycled, but we haven’t seen it before in 3D and with a British accent.
The dance movie, I admit has always been a guilty pleasure spectacle; there have been good dance movies (Stomp the Yard was wonderful and inspiring) and ones that approach midnight movie cult status in their awful hilarity (yeah, I’m talking to you, You Got Served). I suppose the true marker of the effectiveness of this genre is are you having fun? Streetdance 3D is fun, more fun than the recent Step Up 3D and the others – or at least from what I remember of the others. They are all pretty generic.
Streetdance 3D does make good use of 3D effects, less so than the in-your-face nature of Step Up 3D, at times I actually (gasp) got drawn into the narrative and forgot about the technique. Also interesting is the rawness of some of the visuals: considering a glare of a window, defining 3D space, or a laser beam at a dance club shooting directly into the lens. The filmmakers are on to something here, despite not making any great strides to further 3,D technology.
With that sai, there are a few things to like about Streetdance 3D. It is typical of the genre; the actors are all who they should be. There is little self-awareness, but it at times is fun. After all this is probably the reason most in the audience are there. If you want social commentary with your dance movie, you should check out How She Move, which is as much a critique of social and immigration policy as it is a dance movie.
How She Move, a Canadian production has a wide release but failed to capture an audience, I think because of generic marketing. Streetdance 3D subsequently has failed to find a US distributor after having success in Europe. This is a film that’s worth seeking out if you’re in the mood for exactly this kind of picture – it delivers what it promises with no surprises.
6 out of 10