Step Up 4: Miami Heat
Director: Scott Speer.
Starring: Kathryn McCormick, Ryan Guzman.
Reviewed by Ben Carey.

[rating: 2/5]

America has a long history flogging the proverbial dead horse when it comes to movie franchises. Bring It On inspired four sequels, all of which were significantly worse than the original; The Fast and the Furious generated five sequels; but the worst offender is American Pie which has spawned a horrific seven sequels, four of which have been straight to video. Step Up seems to be heading the same way.

Sean (Guzman) lives in one of the ‘slums’ of Miami and works in a kitchen for an oppressive boss. He and his friends want a way out of the slums and it just so happens that they have a plan. They discover that YouTube is running a competition for fresh content, the winner of which will win $100,000. They form a flash mob dance crew and start posting their antics online. But their videos are missing something. When Sean meets Emily (McCormick), an aspiring young dancer, he knows he has found the missing link.

The intro to Step Up 4: Miami Heat is like a cross between a James Bond movie and that annoying Big Brother shuffle commercial that Channel Nine keeps plaguing their Olympics coverage with. The rest of the film is just as confusing.

The script is god awful. The dialogue is beyond cringe-worthy and contains far too many forced references to popular culture. It turns out that cheap references to cool movies such as Star Wars, The Godfather, Batman, and Mission Impossible don’t inherently make your film cool. Who would have known? The story, if you can call it that, is severely lacking and seems like filler between the dancing segments. On that note, the dancing is quite good and sometimes even creative – the most entertaining and artistic sequence is when The Mob hits an art gallery – but near the end it feels a bit samey and too synchronised.

I have no idea why this film is in 3D, there is one segment where they are dancing on the beach and they flick some sand up at the camera and there’s the odd occasion where one of the dancers will dance towards the screen a little, but that’s it. I wish the studios would stop trying to swindle cinema-goers with cheap-arse post-3D.

In conclusion, if you are a fan of the first three films, then you will probably enjoy this one. But if you have only seen the first one and somehow expect the fourth one to be just as good, you are in for disappointment. If you just love dance and don’t care about the story, save your money and watch So You Think You Can Dance on free to air or Dance Academy if you have a craving for teen drama as well as dancing.