Happy 4th of July! Here's a movie about an American art form. 
Kelly (Lucinda Dickey) is a jazz dancer trying to break into a very competitive world. For fun, she hangs out with breakdancers Ozone (Adolfo "Shabba Doo" Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers). When Kelly's dance teacher, Franco (Ben Lokey), sexually harasses her, she quits and forms a new dance group with Ozone and Turbo. Kelly's agent, James (Christopher McDonald), is initially skeptical about breakdancing's mainstream appeal but gets the group booked for a very high-profile audition, where they must face off against Franco and his elite dancers.
This is the debut of Ice-T, in case you only know him as the Law & Order guy and might be the youngest performance I've ever seen of McDonald, most famous (probably) for being the antagonist in Happy Gilmore. Also, yes, that is Jean-Claude Van Damme hanging out in the background of the Venice Beach dance sequence.
The plot is really simple and the performances are not great because almost no one in this was a professional actor. However, the dance scenes are great and that is what matters here. This movie paved the way for "white girl uses her privilege to highlight Black art" films like Save the Last Dance and Bring It On. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.
No comments:
Post a Comment