STEP UP ALL IN (2014)

Genre: Dance/Drama
Director: Trish Sie
Cast: Briana Evigan, Ryan Guzman, Adam Sevani, Alyson Stoner, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, Misha Gabriel
RunTime: 1 hr 52 mins
Rating: TBA
Released By: Shaw
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 4 September 2014

Synopsis: The newest chapter in the smash hit STEP UP franchise reunites an all-star cast in glittering Las Vegas. After struggling in Hollywood for over a year, Sean's (Ryan Guzman) crew disbands and moves back to Miami without him. Refusing to give up the dream, Sean stays in LA. When he hears about an upcoming dance competition in Las Vegas that could be the opportunity of a lifetime, he teams up with dance phenoms Moose (Adam Sevani) and Andie (Briana Evigan) to assemble a new dance crew. Reuniting with STEP UP favorites including the Santiago Twins, Jenny Kido and Madd Chadd (aka Robot guy) and a few new faces, the crew must band together in the finale in order to beat the contest at its own game.

Movie Review:

At this point in the ‘Step Up’ franchise, you would think the makers would try to shake things up by breaking from formula; and yet, the best they could come up with was to reunite the stars from the previous four entries for a fifth – and possibly final hoo-rah – in none other than glitzy Las Vegas. Unfortunately, anyone expecting for its most notable star Channing Tatum to reprise his role will be sorely disappointed, for the actor has obviously moved far beyond the series that arguably launched his Hollywood career. 

So if anyone has been taking note, Briana Evigan from ‘Step Up 2 The Streets’ and Ryan Guzman from ‘Step Up Revolution’ are the leads here. As the opening credits roll, we learn that the latter and his crew known as ‘The Mob’ have moved from Miami to Los Angeles to shoot a Nike commercial, where facing one dispiriting go-nowhere audition after another, Sean (Guzman) is now left on his own. Feeling abandoned and betrayed, Sean approaches Moose (Adam Sevani) for a job at his elderly grandparents’ dance studio, whereupon he chances on a dance contest known as ‘The Vortex’ hosted by VH1 host Alexxa Brava (Polish dancer Izabella Miko obviously channelling Elizabeth Games’ emcee role in ‘The Hunger Games’).

The prize is a three-year gig in Las Vegas, so Sean wastes no time in assembling a new cadre of dancers. Well, we mean new in the relative sense of the word. The crew whom Sean assembles is mostly a host of familiar faces that ‘Step Up’ fans will immediately recognise – besides Evigan’s Andie and fan favourite Moose, there’s the South American twins (Facundo and Martin Lombard), the token Asian girl (Mari Koda) and that tall dude who does the killer robot (Chadd Smith) – with a few notable additions like foxtrot teacher Chad (David "Kid David" Shreibman) who has a hidden step-dancing talent. Together, they dub themselves ‘LMNTRIX’, for no other reason other than the fact that it sounds cool.

With the setup over and done with, new director Trish Sie and her team of choreographers Jamal Sims, Christopher Scott and Dondraico Johnson dispense largely with the plot machinery and let the dancing – which is after all the star of all the movies – do the heavy lifting.  Instead of the flash mobs of the previous film, the sequences here largely unfold in the context of an epic dance battle set to contemporary club music, and Sie, a choreographer best known for her work on OK Go's super-viral treadmill-assisted video ”Here It Goes Again”, provides enough buoyancy and thrill within these sequences to keep her core audience entertained.

Forget about the redundant storylines scripted by ‘Into the Storm’s’ John Swetnam about choosing love over friendship or passion over career – whenever the music stops, the movie becomes a drag; though to be fair, the plot here feels even more threadbare than any of its predecessors. But it’s not likely that fans will mind, as Sie reserves the imagination for the movie’s dance scenes, including an imaginative Frankenstein-themed sequence set in the engineering lab Moose has his day job in, as well as (our personal favourite) a charming dance duet between Sean and Andie in the middle of a carnival ride. 

The latter, in our opinion, trumps the gaudy show-stoppers which bookend the film. In particular, the climax with steam punks dancing in the sand and Barbarian girls twirling spears of fire stretches credulity even by the standards of this franchise, especially since none of the moves which we see them rehearsing for actually seem to hint at how they could have prepared for such a Cirque Du Soleil-inspired item. And yet, if it’s spectacle you want, it’s spectacle you’ll get, which seems to be the main purpose of this latest outing.

You can’t blame the actors for being less than expressive; as the movie does, they seem to reserve themselves for the physically demanding sequences and otherwise remain square-jawed and/or blank-eyed. Even the romance between Guzman and Evigan fails to pop, the former especially making you wish even more that the producers had tried harder for Tatum to reprise his role in this one. The rest of the actors offer little assistance outside of the dance floor, leaving only Sevani to prove why he has been the one consistent actor/ character to appear in each and every one of the ‘Step Up’ films sans the first one.

Indeed, ‘Step Up: All In’ is one made with and for the fans in mind. If you aren’t already a convert, you’re not likely to find anything that will make you change your mind; and if you’re already a convert, then well this film delivers exactly what you’ve come to expect. Yes, besides assembling an all-star line-up of the performers from the earlier ‘Step Up’ films, there is nothing new that this latest instalment offers – and to some we suspect, that may be nothing less than an irony especially   if you consider just how important inspiration and imagination is to dance itself. 

Movie Rating:

(More of what you’ve come to expect from the ‘Step Up’ films – great dancing, bad plotting and little-to-no characterisation – this one is made strictly for the fans)

Review by Gabriel Chong