Cast shows energy in 'How She Move'
The film is Canada’s version of New York City life.
By ROGER MOORE
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
“How She Move” is “Stomp the Yard” without the yard, “You Got Served” with a Jamaican accent. It’s a laughably overfamiliar melodrama about stepping, the aggressive, confrontational street dancing that evolved from break dancing, kronking and the like.
Most of the characters are clichés, and the “big contest” finale is a given. But at least the setting and the street-real grit and energy of the cast keep it on its feet.
Rutina Wesley is Raya, a teenager who recognizes the dead end where she grew up, that killed her drug-addict sister.
“That’s all this place is. A whole lot of people killing themselves for things that don’t even matter.”
Raya has a plan. She is focused on it to the exclusion of everything and everyone else — private school scholarship, then Johns Hopkins Medical School, and never look back after that.
Her plans take a financial and emotional hit and she’s back in the ‘hood, trying not to fit in, trying harder not to stand out.
But Raya’s need for school tuition meets a skill she hasn’t used much, of late. She hears of a $50,000 “Monster Step” contest, one she can win if she can get on the right crew. It’s a sexist world, this step dancing. So she won’t consider ex-pal Michelle’s “Fem Phatal.” She has her eyes set on JSJ, a crew led by the ever on-the-make Bishop (Dwain Murphy).
The movie makes much of Raya’s mercenary pursuit of alliances that could get her the cash to put her dream back on track, and much more of her rehearsals, arguments with fellow dancers and her love-hate relationship with Michelle (Tre Armstrong).
Mom disapproves. She’s already lost one daughter to “that foolishness” and “those people.” Bishop may be thinking with his glands, not his head. But Raya, she’s got a dream.
The bulk of the picture is just dancing — rhythmic, propulsive, athletic and suggestive, if only rarely graceful or pretty.
Wesley and Armstrong have a reality about their performances that make this Jamaican-accented drama feel like a slice of life. Unfortunately, the characters they play inhabit a hackneyed universe of “good crew” versus “bad crew,” of obvious plot contrivances that yank Raya from one crew to another.
“How She Move” hides its Canadian heritage, with only a reference or two to Richmond Hill (Ontario) giving away the fact that these urban “projects” and those street-hardened kids aren’t from the Bronx, Brooklyn and environs. That contributes to the movie’s “outsider looking in” vibe. School guidance counselors who care, kids allowed to value learning by their parents, their peers. This isn’t Hollywood’s version of New York. It feels Canadian.
But even if the setting is novel and the leads seem authentic, “How She Move” is all too content to step down a well-worn path.