Movie Reviews

Sophie Giraud / Paramount Vantage

Review in a Hurry:  Following in the footsteps of countless dime-a-dozen teen dance flicks, How She Move creams them all with a richly told story of a smart girl stomping her way to success. Director Ian Iqbal Rashid overrides cliché to tell a riveting story backed by a thumping soundtrack.

The Bigger Picture:  Raya (newcomer Rutina Wesley) has one foot out the door of her dangerous neighborhood and one foot still in the tiny apartment she shares with her parents. They've sacrificed everything to send her to boarding school, but she has to leave after her sister's drug-related death. Sensing her future is doomed without next year's tuition, she decides to enter a $50,000 step dancing contest in Detroit.

She wants to join old friend Bishop (Dwain Murphy) and be the only girl in his all-male crew, a foreign concept in the world of step dancing. Naturally, this doesn't stop Raya from trying, no matter how much the community she abandoned resents her ambition.

Step—an amalgam of tap, hip-hop and tribal dance—lends itself to a filmic portrayal of gritty existence perhaps more than any other style of dance: The constant slam of feet on concrete and the barely veiled aggression of the moves delivers a steady stream of adrenaline to the big screen. Set to a soundtrack by the likes of Missy Elliott and Busta Rhymes, How She Move is a song and dance experience of such intensity, it makes High School Musical look like an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Along with the dancing, the earnest performances and handheld cinematography imbue the film with the feeling of a carefully planned documentary. Anchoring it all with her impressive debut performance is Wesley as Raya, our hip-hop heroine. When she goes to Detroit, it's with wisdom beyond her years but the vulnerability of a child, and Wesley translates all this to the screen with ease.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  The plot wobbles a bit as Raya's loyalties shift from one neighborhood group to another, even during the big dance contest. It's an unnecessary device to prolong tension, when all you want to see is these kids getting down and dancing hard.