Step UpA Fame knockoff  August 17,
2006 12:40:18 PM
Here’s an idea: kids of all colors and walks of life attend an art school where personalities, backgrounds, and artistic styles clash. If that sounds way too familiar, it’s because writer Duane Adler has barely waited five years to recycle his screenplay for Save the Last Dance, already an ersatz knockoff of Fame (1980). It doesn’t help either that the film is directed by first-timer Anne “Mama” Fletcher. Moments intended to affect, such as the tragic death of a major character, float across the screen as calculated and stilted. There’s a tenuous chemistry between Nora (Jenna Dewan), the feisty rich-girl ballerina with integrity, and Tyler (Channing Tatum), the brooding outsider from the rough side of Baltimore. And the (too few) vignettes of Tyler romping with his younger, foster home charges endear as well. But the dance number at the end feels like Justin Timberlake time-warped into a 1980s Paula Abdul video.
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Step Up Web site: //www.myspace.com/stepupmovie
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Another Martin Lawrence shtick
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A chilling gangland epic
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A grand idea
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A step ahead of the rest
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A rich kid on the road to comeuppance
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Ever shirtless, ever silly
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Oodles of fun
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Inadvertent camp
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No pulse
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A humorless turd
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- Artfully done soap opera
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- Art vis-à-vis life
- The world of half-baked ideas
- A Karate Kid ripoff
- Far out "history"
- Good-natured, egalitarian, and mildly stupid
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- Another Martin Lawrence shtick
- Not worth the Oscar
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