Street Dance 2 (2012)

Directed by: Max Giwa, Dania Pasquini | 85 minutes | drama, music, romance | Actors: Tom Conti, George Sampson, Falk Hentschel, Sofia Boutella, Jess Liaudin, Stephanie Nguyen, Joanna Jeffrees, Matthew David McCarthy, Eva Dagoo, Chris Knight, Lee Craven, James Michael Rankin, John Duggan, Sami Tesfay, Tom Swacha, Fredi ‘Kruga’ Nwaka, Akai Osei-Mansfield, Brian Niblett, Benjay X Murphy, Samuel Revell, Ratisha Belush, Mark Tristan Eccles

The genre of dance films, which experienced a revival in the 1970s with classics such as ‘Grease’ (1978) and ‘Saturday Night Fever’ (1977), is on the rise again in the new millennium. Films such as ‘Step Up’ (of which the fourth part will premiere in July 2012), ‘Save the Last Dance’ of which two parts have already been released, and ‘Shall We Dance’ (2004) there are a relatively large number of new films. franchises within this genre emerged. After the commercially successful ‘StreetDance’ (2010), ‘StreetDance 2’ was of course inevitable.

In the first part of ‘StreetDance’ we were introduced to a group of street dancers who had to work with a number of ballet dancers in London in order to eventually win the ultimate dance battle with the major competitor. No one should expect more from the story of the second part than the very thin plot of part one. In this case London has been replaced by Paris and where in the first part the assignment was to combine street dance with ballet, in this case a combination between street dance and salsa has to be formed. The main character in ‘StreetDance 2’ is Ash (Falk Hentschel). Ash is the leader of his group of street dancers, made up of the best dancers from all over Europe, and to defeat their great rival, called ‘The Invincibles’, they turn to Eva (Sofia Boutella), a specialist in South American salsa. .

It is really superfluous to explain the story any further. Obviously there is a very bad romance in it. You can’t get much more predictable and perfunctory than this. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to judge the film purely on this, because the story doesn’t matter at all and is an excuse to portray the many different dance scenes, which it is all about. These scenes themselves are of a fairly variable level. This is of course partly done on purpose because the whole movie revolves around the big final dance in which Ash and his team take on ‘The Invincibles’. The many dances that the film presents are therefore a bit obligatory, especially in the beginning, but it is built up quite well. The big final act in a gigantic stadium is rightly a good award and will bring you on the edge of your seat. The soundtrack and the eventual combination of salsa and street dance are certainly beautiful and for dance lovers this is a pleasure.

Does this also make ‘StreetDance 2’ a good film? No, definitely not. Apart from the story, there is still more wrong with it, such as the (expected) extremely mediocre acting. Main character Ash in particular comes across as rather clumsy due to his huge hollow look in his eyes and the other characters are also not much. The dialogues are therefore extremely weak. Apart from a somewhat funny eating scene in which Ash tries to impress by eating as many peppers as possible, ‘StreetDance 2’ has very little to offer in terms of film. The addition of 3D is also superfluous, just like in the first part. In addition, it is painful for the Dutch to see that in the beginning we see the Dutch flag waving on a map of Europe in blue white red instead of red white blue. No, the only conclusion can be that ‘StreetDance 2’ is a dream for street dance lovers, but a nightmare for the lover of a good movie.