OMG, I have so totally, like, just seen this chickflick, and I'm so "What are all these teenage girls doing at this movie?" To be fair, nobody actually talks like this in the movie, but I just feel that it probably represents the target demographic. I'm pretty certain that, as an old git, I'm not in the target demographic. Hang on to your hats, I'm going to spoiler this one bigtime.
First of all, this movie has the Most Forgettable Title Of All Time. I kept trying to remember it on the way home, and I got Bring It On, Never Give Up, and several like that. All wrong. It's Make It Happen. Make It Happen. Got that? Good. Don't forget.
What? You forgot already? Yeah, me too.
So Lauryn heads out the 600 miles from Hickville to Chicago to audition for dance school. Now they're auditioning 2,000 kids for 20 places, so it's no surprise to us when Lauryn lasts 30 seconds before being booted off the stage. She withdraws to a coffee shop to nurse her disappointment, only for her car to be towed away in the middle of a thunderstorm. She is lucky, therefore, to encounter Dana, the young waitress, and also the Kindest And Most Trusting Person In The History Of Movies. Dana offers Lauryn, a complete stranger, not only indefinite board and lodgings back at her apartment, but also an introduction which leads to Lauryn getting a job as bookkeeper - she was a bookkeeper back home (I confess to feeling a rosy glow at this point, what with being firmly rooted in the beancounting business myself). It turns out that this job is at Ruby's (owned, confusingly, not by Ruby but by Brenda) where, we discover, Dana dances when she's not being a waitress. Having danced, Dana more or less disappears from the movie at this point. And Lauryn is saved from having to tell her brother, Russ, back home that she failed the audition.
The writers of this movie have clearly made more than one visit to the Cliché Mine, and have emerged loaded down with swag on each visit because, as I am sure you are expecting, the next thing to happen is for Brenda to be faced with no dancers, following which Lauryn steps into the breach and is a sensation.
A word about the dancing at Ruby's. This is a club which features dancing, and Brenda explains that she's after a different sort of dancing. She sure is. It is raunchy dancing which isn't raunchy. It's clearly intended to be raunchy, but the movie is PG, which means any little kid can see it. So "raunchy" translates as "mildly suggestive." When the dancer rips off her skirt, there's another smaller skirt below it, that kind of thing. But the crowd appear to love it, whistling and whooping like nobody's business. Go figure.
So Lauryn does a bit of dancing for Brenda, and a romance starts with the bloke who does the music: he encourages Lauryn to go for the special extra one-off additional audition for a further 2 places at dance school which just became vacant. Further clichés heave into view...
But before contact is made with them, Lauryn's brother Russ arrives at Ruby's, and leaves in some distress that Lauryn is dancing, fully clothed, in a mildly suggestive manner. During the argument which follows, he tells her that the garage - their late father's - is just about to go broke, and he blames her for their father's death. Stricken with guilt, Lauryn returns to start bookkeeping like mad at the garage.
But Russ realises that he shouldn't have emotionally blackmailed his sister into giving up her dream just to save the garage, and packs her off to the audition. As she arrives, the musical boyfriend gives her a new track he's just finished (it turns out to be the unfinished one she'd encouraged him to finish earlier, no surprise there then). She's too late for the emergency extra auditions, but she throws a completely out of character wobbly and dances anyway. I was very impressed with this - dancing perfectly to a piece of music she hadn't heard before, said dance incorporating things like the piano and steps which are on stage (the locations of which she couldn't have anticipated).
So it will come as no surprise to you to learn - guess what - that she passes the audition. The garage goes down the tubes, but what the hey.
This movie was drivel. Recycled drivel, at that. But I kind of enjoyed it anyway. Lauryn is a pretty, personable girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bruce Willis' daughter in Die Hard 4) and quite attractively drawn as a character. She dances OK, too, although the dance sequences don't have the vitality and dynamism of those in, say, Fame, Footloose, Dirty Dancing etc.
Don't expect to be surprised at any point, though. Especially after you've read this!
First of all, this movie has the Most Forgettable Title Of All Time. I kept trying to remember it on the way home, and I got Bring It On, Never Give Up, and several like that. All wrong. It's Make It Happen. Make It Happen. Got that? Good. Don't forget.
What? You forgot already? Yeah, me too.
So Lauryn heads out the 600 miles from Hickville to Chicago to audition for dance school. Now they're auditioning 2,000 kids for 20 places, so it's no surprise to us when Lauryn lasts 30 seconds before being booted off the stage. She withdraws to a coffee shop to nurse her disappointment, only for her car to be towed away in the middle of a thunderstorm. She is lucky, therefore, to encounter Dana, the young waitress, and also the Kindest And Most Trusting Person In The History Of Movies. Dana offers Lauryn, a complete stranger, not only indefinite board and lodgings back at her apartment, but also an introduction which leads to Lauryn getting a job as bookkeeper - she was a bookkeeper back home (I confess to feeling a rosy glow at this point, what with being firmly rooted in the beancounting business myself). It turns out that this job is at Ruby's (owned, confusingly, not by Ruby but by Brenda) where, we discover, Dana dances when she's not being a waitress. Having danced, Dana more or less disappears from the movie at this point. And Lauryn is saved from having to tell her brother, Russ, back home that she failed the audition.
The writers of this movie have clearly made more than one visit to the Cliché Mine, and have emerged loaded down with swag on each visit because, as I am sure you are expecting, the next thing to happen is for Brenda to be faced with no dancers, following which Lauryn steps into the breach and is a sensation.
A word about the dancing at Ruby's. This is a club which features dancing, and Brenda explains that she's after a different sort of dancing. She sure is. It is raunchy dancing which isn't raunchy. It's clearly intended to be raunchy, but the movie is PG, which means any little kid can see it. So "raunchy" translates as "mildly suggestive." When the dancer rips off her skirt, there's another smaller skirt below it, that kind of thing. But the crowd appear to love it, whistling and whooping like nobody's business. Go figure.
So Lauryn does a bit of dancing for Brenda, and a romance starts with the bloke who does the music: he encourages Lauryn to go for the special extra one-off additional audition for a further 2 places at dance school which just became vacant. Further clichés heave into view...
But before contact is made with them, Lauryn's brother Russ arrives at Ruby's, and leaves in some distress that Lauryn is dancing, fully clothed, in a mildly suggestive manner. During the argument which follows, he tells her that the garage - their late father's - is just about to go broke, and he blames her for their father's death. Stricken with guilt, Lauryn returns to start bookkeeping like mad at the garage.
But Russ realises that he shouldn't have emotionally blackmailed his sister into giving up her dream just to save the garage, and packs her off to the audition. As she arrives, the musical boyfriend gives her a new track he's just finished (it turns out to be the unfinished one she'd encouraged him to finish earlier, no surprise there then). She's too late for the emergency extra auditions, but she throws a completely out of character wobbly and dances anyway. I was very impressed with this - dancing perfectly to a piece of music she hadn't heard before, said dance incorporating things like the piano and steps which are on stage (the locations of which she couldn't have anticipated).
So it will come as no surprise to you to learn - guess what - that she passes the audition. The garage goes down the tubes, but what the hey.
This movie was drivel. Recycled drivel, at that. But I kind of enjoyed it anyway. Lauryn is a pretty, personable girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bruce Willis' daughter in Die Hard 4) and quite attractively drawn as a character. She dances OK, too, although the dance sequences don't have the vitality and dynamism of those in, say, Fame, Footloose, Dirty Dancing etc.
Don't expect to be surprised at any point, though. Especially after you've read this!