Dance Flick DVD

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Headline: Wayans Brothers Shocking Spoof Out on DVD

Times sure have changed when a film featuring a character wearing tights which emphasize the outline of her oversized private parts can be rated PG-13. But that’s what we have with Dance Flick which, just to make sure you get the dirty double entendre, further hits you over the head by having Ms. Cameltoe (Amy Sedaris) utter lines like “I bet you’ve heard I have a big [C-word].” And “I’ve inserted tampons bigger than you.” The unsubtle Cameltoe teaches at mythical Musical High School where her overexposure works hand-in-crotch with Thomas Uncles (Damon Wayons, Jr.), a prized pupil who announces his plans to become a “vaginacologist.”
Such bad taste is par for the course in this Wayans Brothers spoof. The picture does follow a rudimentary plotline, although it’s real reason for being is to satirize familiar scenes mostly from famous dance movies. The story revolves around Megan (Shoshana Bush), a white girl from the suburbs who moves to the slums to live with her slacker father (Chris Elliott) following her mother’s fatal car accident.
After transferring to Musical High, the Juilliard-bound ballerina is befriended by a classmate, Charity (Essence Atkins), who leaves the infant in her locker during the school day. Somehow, the single-mom does have plenty of time to show the newcomer how to survive in the ‘hood, and to introduce Megan to her big brother, Thomas.
We know that Megan finds him handsome, when she admits, “I like his big fat butt.” However, the dialogue again goes way over the top when Charity’s inappropriately incestuous response is, “Well, you should see his [bleep]!” Needless to say, lust, if not love, blossoms between Megan and Thomas as the subsequent series of skits inexorably build up to a couple of big finales: the senior dance showcase and the senior prom.
En route, however, bottom-feeding Dance Flick repeatedly crosses a line
whether it’s by calling a basketball team comprised of black females the “Nappy-Headed Hos,” by depicting a black toddler catching a sexually-transmitted disease because he didn’t wear a condom, or by showing the same baby packing a pistol. Ditto for the skit where Megan dons blackface to enter the Violence Club, a place which is popular because “all the ballers get shot there.”
In case you haven’t noticed, the movie basically relies on a running joke linking African-Americans with a variety of depraved behaviors. To get away with such an outrageous theme, the material had better be so relentlessly funny that nobody stops to think about what they’re laughing at, which, sadly, is rarely the case with Dance Flick.
Coarse, adult-oriented fare guaranteed to induce more groans than guffahs.

Fair (1 star)
Rated PG-13 for profanity, ethnic slurs, sexuality and crude humor.
Running time: 83 minutes
Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment