Step Up 2: The Streets

"Step Up 2 the Streets" has a message that slips through, at odds with the movie's blatant insincerity.

It is this: Youthful physicality is pure and impervious, even when it's framed, choreographed, directed and generally falsified by corporate grown-ups. As we groan at the two leading, squeaky-clean performers (Robert Hoffman and Briana Evigan) pretending to be oh so "street" in their designer togs and exchanging "attitude"-laced dialogue that induces unintentional laughter, we can still revel in the kinetic flow as they dance.

We mention this because there's precious little else to occupy the senses while sitting through this follow-up to 2006's "Step Up," an equally artificial soundstage dance film, also set in the Maryland School of the Arts in Baltimore. (Channing Tatum, star of the first movie, makes a brief appearance to give us the illusion that this is a sequel.) So let's leave these herky-jerky lovebirds to utter those false nothings between their choreographed gyrations. Let's wait for a movie where they do get it all right: story, acting and dancing. It'll happen, just not this time.

-- Desson Thomson (Friday, Feb. 15, 2008)

Contains stylized street beatings and very little resembling authentic human behavior.