In Your Face!
Dance movies move into the next dimension with the biggest step of all...

By ARIS ZARIL

It seems the compulsory word following movie trailers of 2010 is 'IN 3D', and it certainly is the case with countless three-dimensional movies hitting our digital screens of late. Almost every genre wants a slice of the cake and dance movies are the latest to join the bandwagon. Hot on the trail of the recent British 3D dance flick Street Dance is the third installment of Step Up, aptly named Step Up 3D.

Picking off where the previous installments left, we see Step Up's Camille (Alyson Stoner) and Step Up 2's Moose (Adam Sevani) head to New York University. Along the way they stumble across upbeat Luke (Rick Malambri), who owns a cool warehouse where his crew dubbed the 'Pirates' eat, sleep and breathe dance. There's even a huge (and I mean HUGE) stack of boom-boxes in one corner! Luke adopts Moose and newcomer Natalie (Sharni Vinson) as Pirate recruits and leads his crew as they compete in the World Jam tournament, in hopes of beating their arch-rivals, the 'Samurai'. As with most movies of this genre, the storyline is typically cliché and rather unrealistic.

You know what, this is a dance flick... What story? What viewers want are the dance performances, and boy did the filmmakers do an awesome job on this. The use of 3D enhances the whole experience, making it a real fun movie to watch. Buckled with excellent choreography, I believe this is the best installment of the franchise yet. It's an extravagant treat for dance fans, from over-the-top LED-charged laser shows to hardcore robot dancing and everything's all done 'in-your-face'-style in 3D. The actors themselves are a talented lot, with a few So You Think You Can Dance finalists and also surprise cameos by Step Up 2 characters.

As far as dance movies go, Step Up 3D is an enjoyable flick that MUST be experienced in the third-dimension as it features one of the best uses of Digital-3D yet. Those unwilling to make the dimension-shift will be missing out on a lot...

4 Stars

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