Apparently the age of dance movies isn’t quite dead yet, and with Brenson Lee’s Battle of the Year being the latest of the bunch, I was interested to see if they’ve come up with anything new to show us.
When the super typhoon Yolanda trashed my plans last Friday night, I immediately went to my favorite go-to activity of going to the cinemas and stay there until snot comes out of my nose. Luckily, my movie buddy Jumong was free at the time so after we were let out early from work, I hightailed right out of Taguig and drove straight to Alabang.
Battle of the Year was the first movie we saw and here’s the round up: (Note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk)
THE GOOD:
1. The group dance sequences. Being a dance movie and all, the dancing was it’s biggest selling point and this movie did not disappoint on that front. Although I might not be the best judge; I still have trouble discerning if a solo dance number is ‘sick’ or not.
2. Chris Brown’s dancing. Yes, he’s in this movie and as much as I don’t like him, I’ve got to admit that the boy can dance. I don’t know what it is about his stance that makes him pop out of the group; your eyes would just gravitate to his form when he’s dancing– whether you want them to or not.
3. That there was no love story. This story is separated from the other movies of the genre by the fact that no, there weren’t any cheesy love plot arcs to give the actors a reason to have those annoying brooding scenes in the middle of a dance montage. Thank God for small favors.
4. Josh Peck’s tag line. Corny, but I kinda dug it, actually. It gave the film humor early on and it was an effective way to establish his character. Unfortunately there is still the question if his character is needed in the film in the first place but hey, at least the tag line was memorable. It’s a shame that they didn’t sustain it throughout the movie.
5. DTrix!!! I was pleasantly surprised to see him in this film and even though he was the first to go, we still got to see his moves on the dance floor. It’a always nice to see Youtubers in Hollywood films; for some reason it makes me feel validated.
THE BAD:
1. B-boy. The term itself kinda graes on my nerves.
2. The Coach. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that Josh Holloway is a fantastic actor and with the right role he could probably blow everybody’s mind. He’s just totally underused and wasted in this.
3. Terrence Jenkins and the rest of the MTV VJs. Their presence was more than a little jarring and a little more than annoying on screen.
4. The split-screen technique that was overused to death in this film. The screen was almost always too crowded that you really wouldn’t be able to focus on anything. Which, if you think about it, is a shame because the dance sequences were really choreographed well and were worth seeing.
THE UGLY:
1. Chris Brown’s tatoos. There’s body art and then there’s this.
2. Overloaded and underdeveloped plot arcs. It is a dance movie and all so I’m not expecting a lot plot-wise but they crammed too many things into the story that when the main conflict was resolved, you’d go “oh yeah, right, that’s still happening”. You get bombarded with homophobic issues, bff tiffs, parenthood issues and a whole lot more but none of the story arcs get developed so you end up with cliches for resolutions. Personally I felt that had they stuck with just the plot of the coach trying to deal with his grief and just with the crew trying to not go at each other’s necks, the emotional impact would have been more lasting.
Who would’ve thought it? Chris Brown was my first trifecta for this series. It’s a shame that you really can’t look at him anymore without remembering what he did to Rhianna’s face; he seems to have a tiny bit of whatever it is that makes people an effective actor, tsk.
Final Verdict: 4.8/10. It wasn’t one big horrible film, just one film with a lot of little bad stuff in it.
