How She Move has the distinct ring of a typical dance movie; a young determined girl trying to get out of a rough neighbourhood, a rival crew who steal steps to get ahead, and parents who don’t want their only daughter to go the same way as her sister. Despite these trappings How She Move manages more than the usual teen flick thanks to good dialogue and a stellar cast.
After her sister dies of a drug overdose Raya Green is forced to leave her private boarding school and return home. Back in her old neighbourhood (Toronto’s Jane and Finch area) she finds that she has been branded an outcast by her peers, who view her as private school snob. Raya immediately concentrates her efforts on the scholarship exam that could get her back into school, and out of the ‘hood. When the exam goes horribly wrong Raya decides to use her talent as a dancer to get into a local crew and win $50,000 in a Step Dance competition in Detroit. But she must fight against the inherent sexism of the Step world, and must battle her ex best friend, who is on a rival crew in order to win the money for her tuition.
Newcomer Rutina Wesley Impresses
American actor Rutina Wesley, who plays Raya has formidable skill despite only recently graduating from Juilliard. She is expressive and engaging. With a lesser talent the film wouldn’t be as easy to swallow. The rest of the cast are Torontonian, and prove that Canadian actors easily match their Southern rivals in talent, despite an unconvincing performance by Shawn Desman as the only white stepper on the crew.
The rest of the acting is fine; Melanie Nicholls-King does a nice job as the stoic long suffering mother trying to keep her daughter and her marriage out of trouble, but it is too tired a character, and too weak a subplot for the audience to invest in.
How She Move was penned by Annemarie Morais, and for a debut screenplay it definitely shows promise. The dialogue is strong, and not as cliché as the surplus of dance movies that have come out in recent years. However, the story seems to be going somewhere interesting in the first hour but quickly loses its edge, putting a stronger emphasis on the dance moves than fleshing out the wafer thin plot. With too long dance sequences, and attempts to build suspense rather than concentrating on character and relationships How She Move suffers in the second half.
How She Move is Not Flashy
One thing it’s not is flashy. There’s no ‘Step up’ gloss, and the ‘hood seems more dreary than gritty and glamorized. How She Move also manages to avoid the earnestness of other films in this genre, at least until the last ten minutes when the script slumps into cliché territory with a cringe worthy mother daughter pep talk.
There is so much focus on the dance, which is admittedly fantastic, that it detracts from the stakes. They didn’t show enough of the school Raya is so desperate to get back to, or her real friends, for the audience to care whether she wins the competition money. Yes, a dance movie should be about dance, but not at the risk of losing the story.
