Dance Flick Blu-ray despite great video and audio falls short as a Blu-ray release
Sweet, innocent Megan's ballet dreams are shattered when she is forced to attend an inner-city high school where she meets Thomas, a young hip-hop dancer from the wrong side of the tracks. With a new crew of friends, can this suburban girl with no street "cred" step up her game and archive her dreams? It's the mother of all dance-offs...and dance movies!
Yeah. Bad movie. Really bad movie. Sorry. I got nothin'.
Punch me. Kick me. Just don't make me watch 'Dance Flick.'
Megan (Shoshana Bush) was once a budding dance prodigy until her mother died a horrible
death -- straight out of a Final Destination
movie -- while on her way to her daughter's most important recital. Having given up on her
dream, Megan relocates to live with her father in a dilapidated apartment in the ghetto.
Attending
"Musical High School," she meets Charity (Essence Atkins), a young mother that treats her baby
like a fashion accessory. Local boy Thomas (Damon Wayans, Jr.) is himself a dancer
and Charity's brother. Megan's new life takes her through a plethora of twists and turns as she
adapts to life at a new school, enjoys the company of her new friend Charity, falls in and out of
love with Thomas, and slowly but surely regains her footing as a dancer.
While one cannot say that Dance Flick lowers the bar for this modern creature, this
"thing," that has taken over for what was once the Parody genre, it doesn't do it any favors,
either. It's "better" than Meet the Spartans,
but that's like saying a bullet through the
head is "better" than a knife through the heart. A miserable experience all around, Dance
Flick recycles stale ideas that were never fresh to begin with and, in what may be a first for
the genre, takes on the new wave of Dance movies that in and of themselves really aren't
popular enough or well-known throughout popular culture for the material to be either relevant
or accessible to many audience members that might happen to sneak into the theater after
watching
Star Trek. (Nobody
would actually pay to see this, would they? Survey says: YES! Dance Flick
earned over $25,000,000 domestic box office gross, beating out actual, real movies like The International
and Observe and
Report). Even the "creative talent" behind dreck like Meet the Spartans and
Disaster Movie had
the wherewithal to incorporate elements of major blockbusters into
their films. Instead of The Day After
Tomorrow, 300, or Cloverfield,
Dance Flick hedges its bets on... High School
Musical? Step Up?
Stomp the Yard? As
Bill Lumbergh would say,
"yeaaaahhhh........" On the plus side of the ledger -- and that's a list that's about as long as
a gnat's eyelash -- Dance Flick comes from some of the same people behind
Scary Movie, a
Parody that represents one of the genre's last bastions of decency
before it crumbled and fell to unfathomable depths that seemed impossible in the days of
Young
Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and
The Naked Gun.
Dance Flick steps up on Blu-ray with a quality 1080p, 1.78:1-framed transfer. The movie
might be garbage, but the transfer is far from being worthy of the scrap heap. There's little grain to
speak of, but the image takes on a consistently strong, colorful, and detailed appearance. It doesn't
match or best the absolute finest transfers on the market, but there's nothing overtly wrong with
this one, either. Detail impresses both far and wide; even distant objects retain a vibrancy, clarity,
and distinction that can make the transfer a pleasure to look at, assuming one can tune out the
actual content of what's on-screen. Colors take on a natural appearance that captures the vibrant
palette found throughout the movie nicely. From dark blue and purples to bright reds and yellows,
this colorful transfer consistently jumps off the screen with eye-pleasing results. With adequate
black levels and skin tones, Dance Flick looks just fine, should anyone care to watch it.
Dance Flick stomps onto Blu-ray with a strong DTS-HD MA 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Much
like the video transfer, this audio mix is far superior to the film and should please those that choose
to give this disc a spin. It should come as no surprise that Dance Flick's soundtrack is
heavy on the music, and it never disappoints. The track's most noted trait is its use of hard-hitting
bass. There's plenty of Hip Hop music that positively blares throughout the movie, and it's
accompanied by a chest-rattling level of bass. Aside from the thunderous low end, there's a fine
amount of crispness and clarity to the music that, all together, makes for a very good listen.
Dance Flick also features a fair amount of atmosphere; club scenes come alive with
background information that does well to immerse the listener into the locale. The thudding bass is
still present, but it's sufficiently lessened to allow dialogue to play through with the same level of
clarity that's to be found throughout the film.
Dance Flick features a few scattered extras. Dance Dance Dance! With the Wayans
Wayans Wayans! (1080p, 21:10) is a standard behind-the-scenes piece that looks at why the
movie is timely in its take on the modern Dance genre. It looks at the films it lampoons, the dance
choreography, the strengths of the various cast members, the story behind each of the main
characters, and more. The piece is assembled with the usual array of cast and crew interview clips,
behind-the-scenes footage, and segments from the film. Dancing Outtakes (1080p, 2:26)
features some dance footage that's absent the "comedy" that accompanies such scenes in the film.
Also included are five deleted scenes (1080p, 8:16) and the film's theatrical trailer (1080p, 2:27).
No wonder Paramount chose not to promote Dance Flick via the online Blu-ray
community. The disc itself is sound enough -- it features satisfactory video and audio presentations
and a couple of extras -- but the movie is absolutely abysmal despite a few scattered yet cheap
laughs. This recent wave of "Parody" movies gives the genre a bad name, and Dance Flick
comes dangerously close to sinking it even further thanks to its take on movies that aren't exactly
ingrained into the movie-going public's conscience, making the job of lampooning them all the more
difficult. What's next, a parody of direct-to-video action duds? Shoot, that might even work better
than this. By any reasonable measure, Dance Flick is a putrid motion picture. Boogie, jig,
waltz, tango, hustle, tap, or two-step away from this one. Fast.
The Jason Statham actioner 'Crank 2: High Voltage' was far and away the top-selling title on Blu-ray during the week ended September 13, according to Nielsen VideoScan. The sales leader of the previous week, 'Gladiator', was number two, while the number one in ...
Paramount Home Entertainment has revealed the full release details for the Wayans brothers movie 'Dance Flick', which as we reported last week, will hit store shelves on Blu-ray on September 8, ahead of the DVD. All extras will be in high definition, and they include ...
Paramount Home Entertainment, recognizing Blu-ray as a growing segment of the business, has announced that it will release 'Dance Flick' on an unrated BD on September 8, four to eight weeks ahead of the DVD release. Special features will include outtakes, deleted ...
