StreetDance 3D: A Review.

Visually impressive? Check. Minorities speaking in broken English? Check. Plot devoid of originality? Check! No, it's not Avatar, (well it could be,just not on this occasion) it's Streetdance 3D, the latest film to jump on the street dancing bandwagon (See: Step Up, Step Up 2: The Streets) except unlike the others, this is set on the mean streets of London. And by mean streets, I mean a fancy ballet academy. Streetdance is a gritty, dramatic and realistic social commentary in which two groups of youths from contrasting upbringings must put their differences aside in order to win the most hallowed and prestigious UK Street Dance Final. Serious shit, I know!

The story centres around Carly and her “crew” of dancers wanting to win the aforementioned competition but in order to practice in a studio in a ballet academy they must allow some of the ballet students to be in her crew. “Madness!” I hear you yell, “That'll never work!” However, dear reader, let me assure it does; the dance routines are nothing short of impressive. To accomplish this former “Britain's Got Talent” contestants Flawless, Diversity, George Samson and Susan Boyle (if only). As earlier tensions between the two groups subside Carly starts to have eyes for “ballet boy” Tomas. As you can imagine this romance follows the usual formula for this type of movie but again the crappy dialogue and acting from the school of stroke victims is saved only by their impressive dancing, this time on the roof of his apartment that happens to look over London as the sun comes up.

An interesting element to Streetdance is the Real 3D which is the same 3D effect that films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. To be honest, it does absolutely nothing to add to the film and in some scenes, where the camera pans overhead, it causes everything to be compressed horizontally. This though for some reason made me think of the 1971 version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, which can only be a good thing right?

The whole film builds up to the climactic dance final. However, an unknown amount of days before the big night the ballet dancers are told that their Royal London Ballet auditions are on the same day! This of course causes problems and almost leaves Carly's crew, now known as Breaking Point, disqualified for not having all their members present on time but luckily Carly's co-worker Eddie jumps on stage with a boom-box (convenient much?) and surprises everyone by breaking out some “ill” moves. The biggest surprise to me though was that Carly didn't notice her co-worker was George Sampson, like c'mon, he was all over the news and surely had to take a few days off work for BGT?

Sure, there's continuity errors, horrible dialogue and the premise is about original as invading Russia during winter, but that didn't stop anyone going to see Avatar; and you'll feel less guilty about knocking one out to the lead female.