Monday, December 30, 2002
What's missing here? Just about everything you'd want.
By HOLLY HANSON
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
It's with a heavy heart that I report that "Tamilee Webb's Fit to the Hits: Motown Moves" is perhaps the most disappointing fitness video of the year.
Oh, how I looked forward to this 30-minute tape, which promised a fun, dance-oriented routine set to Motown tunes. With winter on its way, many of us look for new ways to get our cardio fix indoors, and this tape seemed like a terrific choice.
The instructor is Tamilee Webb, a veteran of the '80s aerobics movement and a practiced performer who seemed well on her way to updating her somewhat dated style. Last year, she broke free of the big hair and disco tunes that were her '80s signatures and produced a very good tape for total-body stretching.
But "Fit to the Hits: Motown Moves" is a rather limp throwback to the dated, easy-to-do but mundane steps and vapid hand movements. They burned calories -- and that's fine -- but they offered little in the way of toning or strength training.
"Motown Moves" has its share of grapevines, V-steps, side-to-side steps and toe touches. There are bow-and-arrow arms, shimmy arms and other moves pulled from the aerobics archives. It gives a good workout, but it's not the uplifting dance party the video box breathlessly advertises.
Webb does a fine job of explaining the moves, and often does them at half-speed first to give home exercisers and her class of four time to get them right. She's also adept at cuing, giving just enough advance notice of what's to come.
Talks too much
The problem is, she talks way too much. The program is organized so that a different short routine is choreographed to each of the six songs on the tape. These step combinations don't take much time to learn -- you'll probably be a pro by the second time through -- so it's simply not necessary for Webb to treat each repetition as if it were a brand new set of steps needing extensive explanation.
But by far her worst transgression is her habit of singing along to the music.
The selection of songs is great, that's what makes the tape's presentation of them so disappointing. There are tunes made famous by Stevie Wonder ("Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours"), the Four Tops ("I Can't Help Myself"), the Isley Brothers ("This Old Heart of Mine"), Martha Reeves and the Vandellas ("Nowhere to Run") and Marvin Gaye ("I Heard it Through the Grapevine").
These artists don't perform the songs, alas, and there is nothing like the Funk Brothers playing in the background behind them; instead, the music is provided by a rather tepid vocal group.
XHolly Hanson, a staff writer for the Detroit Free Press, has been working out with exercise videos since Jane Fonda produced her first tape.