Step Up: Year of the Dance (2019)

More Questions Than Dancing

Step Up: Year of the Dance is a 2019 Chinese dance film that follows two dance crews from different social classes, who then combine forces to defeat a prolific dance crew from the United States. The plot sounds riveting... but it was very much the opposite.

God, I wanted to like this so much because Meiqi (the lead actress) is one of my biases from WJSN, but I really couldn’t. Everything about this film was terribly bland (the only highlight was seeing Jade Chynoweth dance, and she was amazing).

Let’s start with the story. Overall, I was confused on what the film wanted to be. Was it trying to be more like a drama, or was it it going to focus more on the dance aspect? It was all over the place.

First, with the Step Up franchise, you obviously have the emotions that come with the passion for dancing... which, to be honest, I only really felt from the male lead Super Dino (who, I think I should point out, is primarily a dancer and not an actor). Even if his introduction in the film was corny as hell, you kind of feel bad for the guy for the rest of the film.

Secondly, the film tried to have some sort of romance amongst the characters, which added absolutely nothing to the story. You forget that there is an attempt of a love line until the film brings it up again. It also, annoyingly, doesn’t get resolved.

Thirdly, there wasn’t much of a clear goal achieved in the film, and the plot itself was very convoluted. It starts off vaguely with Super Dino’s character Tie Hua having to reveal something to Meiqi’s character Xiao Fei, to “DaNcE iS mY pAsSiOn,” to “We gotta beat the Black Tigers!!”, to “Oh no, we gotta avenge our brother Tie She,” to “Okay, we gotta beat Phantom now.” There were also many plotholes, from how the joined forces between Iron Crew and Sky Crew decided upon focusing on “kung-fu inspired dance,” to He Jr.’s father suddenly giving approval to his son dancing. So many questions...

To sum up this review, I absolutely hated this film. I even couldn’t enjoy the dance scenes because how angry and confused I was while watching it. I don’t recommend watching it unless you’d also like to be just as angry and confused lol.

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