How She Move: Critic Reviews

She move good!

The strong acting, spectacular dance routines and culturally specific details in How She Move turn cliches into catharsis.

Another week, another urban dance movie from the United States.

Though the story is predictable, How She Move has two key assets: powerful dance sequences and an emphasis on education.

The story itself is a hodgepodge of devices, conceits and half-baked motives, but amid the dissing and the dancing are affecting moments, usually quieter ones, between people at war who shouldn't be.

A grittier, slightly more real-world version of movies like Step Up, Stomp the Yard, and Save the Last Dance.

For once, the movie -- written by Annmarie Morais and directed by Ian Iqbal Rashid with a gritty overlay of 16mm grain -- regards book learning as at least as important as physical prowess.

How She Move gets it right in every dance sequence, but stumbles badly whenever the characters step offstage (or a car hood, or the sidewalk, or wherever they happen to be practicing).

Though it may sound like it, How She Move is not just another dance-off flick.

How She Move was shot on the cheap in 16-mm. film, and some of it is a little drab-looking, but it has energy and bravado.

How She Move proves you can't judge a film by its plot line, even if it sounds suspiciously similar to a few other movies about stomping the yard and dreaming your dream and dancing like you mean it.

This step-dancing drama is mired in cliche, but with its dingy ghetto settings and hardened, despondent young characters, it's marginally more interesting than Stomp the Yard.

How She Move was nominated for the grand jury and audience award prizes at last year's Sundance Film Festival thanks to its ingratiating sincerity, a winning cast and musical numbers that could rouse the dead. Or even the Norwegian.

Honestly, this is a carbon copy of every other 'gotta dance' flick ever made, down to the cheesy emcees who host the big dance-off (it's in Detroit!) and the wannabe heart-tugging conclusion.

How She Move, quite simply, doesn't move. Instead, the dreary, familiar tale unspools in painfully static fashion. If there's a glimmer of imagination here, it's not visible in the finished product.

Moody, intelligent take on conventional material.

As we replay last year's step-dance hit Stomp the Yard, the ostensible message about working hard in school gets stomped out of the yard.

Even if the setting is novel and the leads seem authentic, How She Move is all too content to step down a well-worn path.

In the increasingly crowded field of movies based on urban dance, How She Move stands out as a well-written and well-acted drama with an appeal that reaches beyond dance fanatics.

You might see the ending of How She Move coming from the first frame, but you'll tap your toes the entire way.

Doesn't exactly break any new ground. But the terrific dance numbers on display should please its teenage target audience.

The formula is so old that you can almost forgive it. What I couldn't forgive is the soap opera/O.C.-like subplots.

...has little new going for it beyond a boatload of energy and enthusiasm. And pure formula.