Pooling together all their funny business DNA, the Wayans clan, including Keenan Ivory, Damon and Shawn, team up with the next grossout generation counting Damien Dante, Damon Jr. and Craig Wayans, for Dance Flick. Fed up with the cookie cutter, sappy afterschool special sensibility of all those footloose teen musicals, the Wayans tribe goes for the jugular with its down ‘n dirty trademark humor, barely clinging to a PG-13 rating.
Damon Wayans, Jr. takes charge of the overly crowded spotlight as Thomas Uncles (a moniker custom fit for dyslexic funny bones). He’s an inner city dance sensation drawn to the equally talented Megan (Shoshana Bush), a white suburban aspiring ballerina forced to downsize her dreams and enroll, to her dismay, in a rowdy ghetto high school following the death of her single mom. And if you haven’t figured out yet where this derivative mock flick is headed, then you probably don’t get out to the movies much.
This hyperactive hip hop satire is at its outrageous best when sticking to parody of whatever dance flicks came before. While Essence Atkins just about upstages every last Wayans with her sparkling ballsy coed attitude, as a righteously babbling baby mama who is nobody’s fool.
But there’s an awful lot of crude conversation tossed in too, as when we’re supposed to laugh on cue as a weeping Megan is forced to watch a giddy musical about her mother’s demise. A distasteful gag which may make you feel like opting for the other type of gag reflex instead.
Dance Flick
– Paramount Pictures
– Rated PG-13
– 2 stars