Step Up 4: Miami Heat (PG)

Time Out says

Tue Aug 7 2012

Move over, Chris Nolan: yours isn’t the only summer entertainment with the Occupy movement on the brain. Pavement politics prance through this latest instalment of the fleet-footed, dim-witted dance franchise, for some reason not called ‘Step Up 4 Ur Rightz’. This one introduces a fresh batch of attractively inexpressive urban toe-tappers, here under threat from Peter Gallagher’s oily property magnate. Naturally, the way to save their working-class seafront community is to stage a series of elaborate pop-up dance routines in a range of moneyed hangouts, with the secret assistance of the tycoon’s dance-crazy daughter (pro hoofer Kathryn McCormick), before selling out at the first sniff of corporate sponsorship. It’s equal parts ‘Flashdance,’ ‘Burlesque’ and ‘Lambada’, all parts ludicrous – but we aren’t here for the story any more than we watch Béla Tarr for the salsa numbers. Abetted by in-your-face 3D, the dancing is astonishing, as the dancers ditch the usual bump-and-grind for unexpectedly conceptual choreography, peaking with an ingenious camouflage routine in a modern art gallery that Pina Bausch might have conceived after a few piña coladas.

Author: Guy Lodge