Review No.164: Step Up 4 - Miami Heat

Onto the second fourquel as the all-dancing Step Up franchise entitled Miami Heat or Revolution depending on what it was you saw it. For arguments sake lets call it Step Up 4 but it does indeed take place in Miami this time focusing on a flash mob known simply as MOB who become infamous after a series of impromptu dance numbers. Sean and Jason are the two members of the MOB that we follow throughout both of whom are from a poor district of Miami as well as working side-by-side at Dimont Hotel owned by Peter Gallagher's dastardly property tycoon Bill Anderson. After work one day Sean meets a girl called Emily who later transpires to be Anderson's daughter though the two do hit it of and he convinces her to join MOB after  she is told she needs to add some originality into her dancing in order to get a place at a prestigious dance company. Around the same time Jason is fired by Anderson while the MOB's bar owner also reveals that Bill will be tearing down all of the old town in order to build a new hotel essentially rendering them all homeless. Emily convinces the MOB to do something about it and arrange a routine in protest of the development which initially goes well however when the rest of the group discover that Emily is Anderson's daughter things don't go to plan. So will Emily get into dance school? Will the area be saved and economic recovery put back another ten years? Will the MOB earn all that money from the YouTube competition? Will Emily and Sean get together? And will anybody make an attempt to tie this film to the rest of the Step Up franchise?

In answer to that last question the film does share a couple of familiar faces from the Step Up films, although most of them simply cameo, but Step Up 4 seems to be parading itself as a stand-alone film. As you can imagine the plot isn't up to much and it seems to resort to the boy from the wrong side of the tracks falls for the upper class girl but they realise they're not too different story although it is done well mainly due to the performance of the always-reliable Gallagher as the her father. Aside from Gallagher the acting is fairly ordinary and the character development is almost zero but then I don't think anybody goes into a Step Up film for any of those sort of things. Yes indeed it is the dance sequences that make these films and the decision to focus on the ever popular flash mob trend was a clever one as it leads to a number of enthralling set pieces my favourites of which were the opening scene on a busy highway and a later number at an art gallery though all of them are impressive. The setting of Miami is also well shot by Karsten Gopinath as he really makes us a part of this hot city with its divide between our poor protagonists and the wealthy landowners. Step Up 4 may not be original but I can't say I wasn't entertained and even a cynic like me found the majority of the dance sequences enjoyable and in some cases fairly unique to the extent where I think this certainly kicked the ass of the Streetdance sequel I watched not so long ago. For a fourquel Step Up 4 certainly has a lot going for it even though there's poor acting and characterisation, the dance sequences are all top notch though I really don't know if there would be room to do a fifth film, or if anybody would want to see it.

Verdict: Packed with plenty of thrilling dance sequences Step Up 4 is an entertaining ride even if the acting and scripting generally sucks but any film with a Mario Lopez cameo can't receive a bad mark so for that reason I'll give it 6/10