Thanks for checking out our Step Up 3D Review

Genre: Dance
Directed by: Jon Chu
Staring: Rick Malambri, Adam G. Sevani, Sharni Vinson, Alyson Stoner
Released: August 6, 2010

THE GENERAL IDEA

A tight-knit group of New York City street dancers, including Luke (Malambri) and Natalie (Vinson), team up with NYU freshman Moose (Sevani), and find themselves pitted against the world’s best hip hop dancers in a high-stakes showdown that will change their lives forever.

THE GOOD

The dancing is pretty amazing, and one thing I really like about the way they present this is not the 3D, but in order to really make you feel like you are there watching it in 3D they film most of the dance scenes with very few cuts, mostly one angle shot and they stay in a shot for a while letting the dance be the star and not some fancy rapidfire visual cuts from 17 different angles. You SEE the dancing. And its pretty damned cool.

The 3D was effective for the most part, but as much as I enjoyed it, I also got to dislike it. It was a hard thing to decide whether it was a good or bad thing.

THE BAD

The 3D. As I mentioned just a moment ago, its as good as it is bad. When they show the dancing in 3D, its cool, but sometime they go out of their way to abuse the 3D placing one dancer WAY in the foreground sporting their moves, or thrusting bubbles at the screen, or tossing something at the audience. These are times where the 3D thing takes you out of the film and just screams “hey look, its 3D!”. 3D is supposed to make you immersive in the film, not take you out of it. These gimmicky moments counter the good ones too much. Even watchin this in traditional presentation will seem awkward as the obvious HEY 3D moments will seem out of place.

The “actors”. And I use quotes because the acting in this is just plain bad. While they try to use a romance and ambition themes througout the film to justify it as a movie and not just a dance-off, its painfully clear that these performers should stick to dancing. The story is predictable, and the end you see coming during the opening credits.

OVERALL

The underdog ambition to big time dance competition story is cookie cutter, but that’s not why you go see these movies. I will be fully impressed when they make one of these movies and I can talk about anything but the dancing.

That is the true test of 3D. If the film is enjoyable without it, then its a nice addition. Its a bonus feature that pulls you deeper into the movie, not some gimmick that yanks you out of it.

I give Step Up 3D a 5 out of 10 ALL for the dancing.