Stomp the Yard

Movies like Stomp the Yard are a dime a dozen, and quite frankly, everyone involved with this project got paid too much to make the same kind of movie we've seen one too many times before. I imagine this movie was not so much written, as it was the entire cast and crew gathered around a TV set, watched a whole bunch of teenage underdog movies, and then the director told the actors to recreate the scenes they just watched. There's not one single instant that we cannot see coming from a mile away, and not one single reason for us to care. Stomp the Yard has not a single thought in its empty head, other than to swindle some teens out of some money for a weekend or two, before it sits forgotten in the DVD bargain bins of video stores the nation over.

When we first meet our hero DJ (Columbus Short), he's just moved to Atlanta from L.A. after his brother is killed by some hoods in a dispute over money. In the film's opening scene, we learn that DJ and his brother were urban step dancers. But, since the tragedy, DJ's happy feet have grown sad, and he just doesn't feel like steppin' no more. Naturally, this new college that our hero has just started has two rival step dancing teams, both of them run by different fraternities on the campus. There is the "good team", who have not won a step competition in years, and then there is the "evil team", who is made entirely out of arrogant rich jerks, and have won the past seven competitions, and like to rub that fact in the faces of the good guys every chance they get. Both fraternities want DJ to join when they learn he has dancing skills, and there shall be no prizes given out for correctly guessing which side he will team up with. Naturally, the head dancer of the evil fraternity, a stuck up jerk named Grant (Darren Dewitt Henson), has a pretty young girlfriend whom DJ also falls for. The girl is named April (Meagan Good), and she realizes DJ is the right guy for her when she learns that DJ has figured out what her favorite color is all by himself, whereas the clueless and obviously heartless Grant has no idea, despite the fact they've been dating for years. April switches to DJ's side, and Grant decides to get his revenge by letting slip that DJ has a past criminal record before he came to Atlanta, hoping to get the guy suspended, so that he won't be able to guide his team to victory during the big step dancing competition that's coming up in just a few weeks.

There's really no point in recapping the plot of Stomp the Yard, since the plot serves no purpose other than to act as an excuse to have the actors stand around and pretend there's a point to this movie. It gets even funnier when the film starts to resemble a bad soap opera, and various twists and turns, as well as long-buried secrets of the past start popping up out of left field. The movie trots out so many plot cliches and overused character types, you'd think they were going out of style. Is the evil fraternity going to try to cheat by secretly videotaping DJ's dance moves so they can study them and pass them off as their own? That's kind of like asking if the sun is going to rise in the East tomorrow. Will there be some kind of last minute revelation that will save DJ from the fate of being suspended from school so that he can show up at the last minute of the dance competition and blow everyone away with his amazing skills? If you consider that last sentence a spoiler, you seriously need to get out of the house more often. Will the two teams be forced to go against one another in a "thrilling" tie breaker dance off? Okay, seriously, I'm running out of answers to these questions. You've seen all of this before, you know you've seen all of this before, and I have no idea why anyone involved with this project thought we would want to see them again. The film cannot be bothered to try anything remotely new or interesting, and simply goes through the pre-required motions that have been set in stone somewhere in Hollywood, and act as some kind of sacred law for every hack screenwriter trying to get their big break in the industry.

Then again, it would certainly help if we could see the action. I tend to enjoy movies more when they are in focus, not constantly shaking and jumping around, and look like they've been shot by someone who knows what they're doing. Clearly director Sylvain White does not agree, as he shoots many of the scenes in such a rapid fire music video style that it can be almost headache-inducing. When he's not jerking the camera around in a spastic motion that really gives the audience the sensation that they are watching the movie while suffering from a seizure episode, the camera will shake a little bit as if whoever is shooting the picture just couldn't get a firm handle on the camera equipment. The film's opening dance off scene literally had me scratching my head as to what I was supposed to be watching, or who was who, as the sequence is so confusingly shot. Things do improve during the big climax, but by then, it's way too late for you to care. Even if the direction and camerawork were sound, I seriously doubt there'd be much worth watching. The characters and the accompanying performances are strictly average in every sense of the word. The characters fall into the expected archetypes (the comical best friend/roommate, the caring yet tough parental figures for DJ, the stuck up father for main girl April, who doesn't want his daughter dating a "thug" like DJ), and the actors seem to know it, so they give just enough effort to make it look like they're trying, but not much more than that.

There's not really a whole lot to say about Stomp the Yard. It exists solely to show off some dance routines, and not much more than that. In order for a movie such as this to work, we have to care about the characters as well, and this movie gives us absolutely no reason to do just that. I can only hope the careers of everyone involved can reach a point so that they can laugh and move on when a project like this crosses their path. Something tells me a movie like this is not a good start to such a career. The best kind of films make us feel something when we walk out of the theater. By the time Stomp the Yard was over, the way I felt would be comparable to if I had just spent the past two hours staring at a wall.

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