You Got Served: Review By B. Alan Orange

Hell Mission Statement #40121: You Got Served

(I have an affinity for any type of Breakin' homage that cheerfully pays tribute to Boogaloo Shrimp and Shabba-Doo. So, my grading curve follows this type of thinking, as it did with the recent Honey (another film trying to cash in on the Electric Boogaloo craze). Those four stars are in place not because ?You Got Served? is necessarily a good movie. No. It's not that at all. But in the elusive realm of "Youth Center" cinema, this thing is, as the inner city street kids would say, "Bangin'". The cheesier, the better. This sh*t should be sold at Pizza Hut, 'cause it's got mozzarella in its crust. If you can't submerse yourself in its stated genre, a genre that doesn't play to the rules of quality filmmaking, then you should probably stay at home. You have to understand that and be a fan of crap. This thing is craptabulous. It?s fast food cinema. It?s supposed to be consumed late at night after a tight Quilmes (which you can?t get right now because those f*ckers at Vons are still on strike) drinking binge.)

Why do you always cry for the happy ending?

B2K broke up. I don't care. Does their departure as an R&B super group ruin my enjoyment of this fine motion picture? Not possible. And to all the little crybaby schoolgirls out there that are contemplating suicide at the very mention of this once great band of brothers disbanding over a childish squabble, I say, ?At least you have this little nug of entertainment in the palm of your hand." Be glad they left you with something to remember them by. When ?my? band Faith No More broke up, I didn't weep rocks of salt into the crotch of my already soiled jeans. No. I accepted it and moved on. I wasn't rewarded with a Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park-like film note to end my vicarious relationship with them on. I didn?t get a final album disguised as a soundtrack to said imaginary film. You particular fans of B2K? You ungrateful little snots get all of that. Gather it up in your arms and be grateful. Give thanks. Enjoy the moment while you can. In ten years, when you?re in college, you?re going to look back at this tiny little spec of a group and laugh at the fact that you even swooned over Omari, dressed in pajama bottoms and a wife-beater, breaking the toilet seat off an already clogged-up toilet.

The one thing you will do, and I'm sure of this...You'll go out of your to buy the digital injection* of You Got Served in the year 2024 and shoot that sh*t straight into your veins. This is destined to be one of those cult classics you remember fondly from your youth. And it?s only when you go back to it as an adult that you?ll see what a horrible gay-ass piece of sh*t it really was.

Seriously. I dig Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. I ran out and bought both of those on their Versatile release dates without hesitation (though, I thought it was weird that MGM issued Part 2 months before Part 1 came out). Where Honey was a straight up remake of Electric Boogaloo, You Got Served stays truer to the roots of the original. I only wish one of these two new dance happy flicks had the balls to toss in a cameo appearance by Lucinda Dickey (she could have played a judge at the Dance Off?), Adolpho" Shabba-Doo" Quinones, and/or Mike "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers. That would have sh*t the fart out of every poo. Sadly, neither project could irk up that type of devotion or inspiration. Shame on them.

If we hired Mr. Rad, a dance-off referee played by the impenetrable Steve Harvey, to host a showdown between Honey and YGS, he'd be separating them with a flag. These two visceral sucker-punches are a funky offshoot of annoyance that creep from the same camp. It's the tough competition. Both of them have moves that we've never seen before. Both are laughably insane. And both of them are implausible in any real sense of the word. But when the dust settles, and all those limbs have flopped...When Mr. Rad places his palms above the heads of these two tiny disaster flicks? Even though it will be hard to differentiate between the roar of their applause, those nauseous screams will be slightly louder for You Got Served.

Why? Because it has more "assitude." There are scenes in this movie that are immaculate in their flippancy towards reality as we know it. I was dumbstruck. I couldn't believe my eyes. This movie is on a higher plain of stupidity than Honey could ever reach, and that's why it's the winner. Involuntary laugh riots of an unintentional nature are at the core of this spacky dance campaign. You've got to love that.

Sure. The dancing seen on screen is phenomenal. Then the story starts. The plot, if you will: It's risiculous. The meaty dramatic strings that link this waltzing war together are made of industrial strength shoelace threads. They?ll keep the tongue tied tight, but you dare not try to hang off the side of the Golden Gate Bridge with them as your only means of support. Within five seconds, you'll be split by the rough waters of the San Francisco Bay.

Ouch.

I love that two of the most daringly cheesy scenes this movie has to offer come as its most important turning points. Call it an arc. It's Omari's fault, really. He dynamically pulls off two vintage crotch knots that will have any observant seat-suffer groaning and giggling to themselves in equal measure.

First, Omari hooks up with his best friend's sister Liyah. The opening segue that sets up their relationship is insufferable. You just might find yourself expunging the seat in a means to hit that exit door. But don't, you're in for a real treat. It's a given that these two kids don't really enjoy each other's company when "cut" is called. I didn't believe in their impending liaison from the get-go. There?s this dead, still feeling in the air. It swirls around the actors like a quiet tornado of doom. Any good will the rousing opening dance battle instilled in your heart is gone at this point. The scene with Omari and Liyah flirting in the kitchen is sudden death for a movie that looked to be heading towards a flavorful goal. Sitting there, I realized that I could go down to Venice, or Hollywood Boulevard, or the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica and see all these superlative dance moves for free. And, as a bonus, I wouldn't have to suffer this dreadful romance struggling to play itself out in high-pitched agony.

But then, a funny thing happened. This became like pressing on a fresh bruise. I was starting to enjoy the pain as applied with pressure. Omari decides to walk Liyah to work. This is where I suddenly realized the Director, Chris Stokes, auteur of the car-crash that is House Party 4 and B2K's manager, is a genius. You have to see this work to truly understand what I'll attempt to explain. Stokes uses the "musical montage" to show Omari walking Liyah two blokes down the street. Two blocks! Usually, this type of stapled together segment is used to show a rather lengthy passage of time. To show us, the audience, that these two are falling in love over the course of a couple of months. But these guys are traipsing past a 1/3 mile of sidewalk. In fact, this montage, overlaid with B2K R&B music, takes longer to play itself out than the actual walk itself. I'm not sh*tting you. It does what the musical montage is supposed to do, and that's the beauty of it. It gives us our first major turning point and sets up the impending conflict. Within two blokes of the house. Stokes is a f*cking genius!

Next comes my favorite scene of the whole movie. It sets up the rest of the story in a whimsical flit of jaw-dropping insanity. And I swear this is how it goes down. When they're not dancing, these kids sling backpacks full of crank up and down the ghetto. Omari is supposed to meet his best friend Marques at a drug dealer's house (that guy looks like the Kingpin from Daredevil as played by MCD). Well, Omari never shows up. Marques has to chug this huge duffle bag of back-ordered toot up a staircase and into an insane asylum by himself. What happens? He gets the sh*t kicked out of him by three ominous looking thugs, and he?s left there on the carpet for dead. Where's Omari?

Well, he went on a date around four o'clock in the afternoon. With Marques' sister Liyah. They've ordered a plate of French Fries. Let me tell you. This is the biggest f*ckin' plate of French Fries any movie has ever seen. They never actually show it on screen. But, Omari, who doesn't like to share with his new girlfriend, starts eating this plate of fries around five o'clock. And while he eats those fries, we see this inner-cut with Marques? plight. By nine o'clock, Marques is at the Drug King?s house picking up the bag of goods. Cut to: Omari eating French Fries and smiling against soft lovely music once again supplied by his group B2K. (I get a nickel every time I mention the group. It's a sweet backend deal.) At about nine-thirty, Marques is seen lugging this heavy merchandise down a cold, lonely street. He tries calling his buddy, but Liyah has made Omari turn off the cell phone. Cut to: Omari, still eating from that plate of fries. Heck, this even looks like the exact same shot they used before. Around 10:15 pm, Marques is seen entering the building where he's to make his drop-off. He moves down a quite corridor. Three huge guys jump him and break his leg, twisting it sideways. This cat has no chance of entering any big dance competition ever again. Cut to: Yup, Omari, still eating those French Fries.

Two hours seem to pass by. They would have to, at the least. I've been in a small town ER waiting room, and that punishment lasts forever. Marques is already laid up in bed with a cast around his foot before other members of B2K rush out to find Omari and tell him the bad news. By this time, it wouldn't take a genius to guess that he's still in the diner, eating Fries from that plate. So, from my time estimate, it took our teenage heartthrob from 5 pm to, at the very least, 12 am to not even finish a plate of French Fries? This cat is sick-mad in love. I doubt it's ever taken that long for anyone to finish anything. Ever.

But the motion has been set. Omari wasn't there for Marques because he was scamming on the guy's sister and slowing shoving cold food into his mouth. In an action that closely mirrors what is going on with the R&B group B2K (kaa-ching) at this very moment, Marques never wants to see Omari again, and he sure as f*ck doesn?t want the guy messing with his sister. I don't blame him.

The way I see it, Marques is in a good, solid film. But Omari keeps f'ing that up with a B-movie mentality that makes this "joint" almost insupportable at times. No wonder the guy is mad. I?d be mad too. That?s pretty much the actionable palate this thing paints for itself. The ending is a forgone conclusion. They will reunite during that third act for the big dance off and everything will be fine. But it doesn't answer "the" universal question:

Are we headed towards a simpler time when a parking lot dance-off could end any dispute without the use of bullets and guns? I sure hope so.

That's what we should do. We should get Bush and Osama, face them against each other, and have them pop-n-lock in a non-stop floorshow for supremacy. Back in the 80s, weapons of mass destruction were nothing more than a tight pair of Nike court shoes and some purple parachute pants. I guess that's why I like these movies, no matter how stupid they get.

Honey earns extra points in the kid department for imploring a human Muppet as their adorable inner city welfare child that is damned to be another statistic. But then, they lose a few hoots and hollers for failing to kill him off. You Got Served knows better. Even though their cute kid from the streets is a little more realistic in appearance, the first time you see him, you say to yourself, "That munchkin's going to be used as bullet storage before the end of the picture." YGS doesn't disappoint. The lil' sh*t gets gunned down in a hailstorm of bullets worse than that which besieged Alonzo Harris. And it's funny. I laughed. Heck, I knew it was coming.

The movie doesn't play to a set rule of ideas. We've pretty much suspended our disbelief for a good 80 minutes. So, at the end, during the big musical number, where everyone is wearing hand-sprayed T-shirts and baller caps in honor of Lil' Saint, I literally expected the ghost of that kid to come floating down from the ceiling in a heavenly gold glow. I wanted to see an angel bust a move. Had that happened, I'd be pounding out a five star review so furiously, you'd think YGS was my favorite cinematic endeavor, ever. Call it an opportunity missed. That would have been the King Sh*t.

I'll admit, straight up, Omari and Marques as the leads are quite an infectious screen pair. I had no idea who they were, or what B2K was about before heading through that door. Yes. 13 and 14 year old girls love these guys. A lot. I met a lady at the Maitreyaplex that explained to me how excited her kids where to see this. They'd already seen it once, and they planned on going back two more times within the week. What the f*ck? That hot milf then went on to tell me how her daughter and her daughter's friend swooned every time Omari came on screen. I don?t get it. The kid's a bit goofy looking to me. That said; I wouldn't mind seeing these two brothers in a better, more-enjoyable-on-a-wide-scale, type of project. They're doing Fat Albert and a horror movie next. Good for them. I applaud that.

No. Really.

You Got Served is an inch above those straight to video "Bar-B-Que" DVDs that are currently plaguing our Rental Shelves like the Ebola virus. All things considered, that's not very ambitious. I'm a fat, ugly man that never exercises, unless you count changing out the ten-disc DVD changer ever fourth day, and I can jump higher than an inch off the floor. Sad if you think about it.

Yeah, this is one of those so-good-it's-bad masterpieces that I'd be proud to have hogging up Versatile shelve space in my home. If you love dog sh*t on a Friday night, or you're a teenage girl, you?re really going to dig this (a hole in the backyard).

It tastes better than Mad Cow disease. You've been served. Now on with you!

(*Just a side note: I've talked about Digital Injections in this column before. Technicians and Scientists are currently working on a way to inject digital bits of information into a person's blood stream where they will eventually store themselves in your tailbone like a bad memory. It kind of works in the same way herpes do. The tiny microchips are locked in your spinal column until you die. All you would have to do after injecting a ?film? into your body is close your eyes and think of the title. It would then play itself out in your brain. I?m not making this sh*t up. I read about it in the November 2003 issue of Popular Mechanics. Seek out the magazine and read it yourself. Scary stuff, indeed.)

Email: agentorange@movieweb.com