Channing Tatum is one of those actors who came from out of the blue from the alternate career he once had. Originally using the skill of dance as his money maker, it would only be until he starred in He’s the Man (2006) alongside Amanda Bynes did he start gaining traction in his movie roles. However, that same year he would star in this film too where Tatum would return to his original career path but in movie form. All the crazier is how he would return to a much more significant film under the name Magic Mike (2012) which would gain him critical success. If anything, this could be seen as his starting point to that of what he would later be best known for. The thing is for this movie, it’s a little bit standard in the execution.
The story’s setting takes place in the urban city where Tatum plays Tyler Gage, a foster child who grew up among others in the streets with no real role model. One day after being caught trespassing in an arts school, he is sentenced to community service cleaning up the school. Little did he know that he would not only find Nora Clark (Jenna Dewan) as a possible partner but also as a dance partner after her main partner injures himself. The narrative was written by Duane Adler and Melissa Rosenberg who would later write for the Twilight (2008) franchise. Directing the feature was Anne Fletcher in her directorial debut and as her first outing it is fine. There are various parts to the film that needed fine tuning but overall the handling of it was okay.
The weak points in the story are mainly just how the story plays out. For those who have seen a lot of films may see all the twists and turns to come because of how formulaic it is. For example, being that the genre this film is in is mainly drama and music, audiences will obviously know that there will be sexual tension between Tyler and Nora and the ups and downs that come from that. It’s just bound to happen. Tyler also has two friends from the hood Mac (Damaine Radcliff) and Skinny Carter (De'Shawn Washington), whom of which he hung out with and got into trouble with. At the beginning of the film, they scuffle with a gang leader…well, at some point that’ll come back to bite them. These kinds of setups are painfully transparent in how they’re set up and how it’ll finish.
There’s even Nora’s friend Lucy (Drew Sidora) and Miles (Mario) who Tyler befriends. At some point these two characters make a connection and it’s apparent what’ll happen between those two characters too. From an acting perspective, all thespians do their jobs correctly. While the playout of the story is very familiar the actors do what they can to make their characters convincing and it works. Channing Tatum easily plays Tyler as the thug bad boy with no direction despite having a skill he doesn’t take advantage of. Jenna Dewan as Nora clearly can play an upper class person who has no understanding of what Tyler is going through. Coincidentally Jenna Dewan would get married to Channing Tatum shortly after and be with him until 2018. While that’s just trivia, that’s not all the good parts.
Visually, what’s on screen is good too. Michael Seresin is credited as the cinematographer to this movie and he captures all the right things. All the dance scenes are well shot too. Started with movies like Rambo III (1988) and two years before ended up helping with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). The dancing itself is also well choreographed where it looks like no one had issues following how to perform in that respect. Lastly for music, the score to this feature is not that prevalent. Since it is a dance genre film, the majority of the music belongs to soundtrack artists. Even with that though Aaron Zigman supposedly scored the film. The same composer behind The Notebook (2004), which is surprising considering how popular that love story movie turned out to be. There’s no score available that can be found for this movie though, which isn’t surprising.
The story is very generic and music belongs mainly to the soundtrack, which makes sense for the genre. It’s just not as entertaining as it could be, although it still holds up. The acting is good as are the dance sequences and the camerawork.
Points Earned --> 6:10
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