Tag: Collins Pennie

Yay, a sequel! I literally don’t know a single movie about step dancing other than these two. The first one, Stomp the Yard, I didn’t know was about stepping until I saw it. It was okay. So of course I was excited for the sequel, Stomp The Yard 2: Homecoming. Sequels to dance movies are always bigger and badder, with sweeter movies and, well, shittier plots usually.

So hopefully, it is sexy. Because if not, I have a whole bunch of other never heard of dance movies to get through to find the secret amazing one..

Holy crap, this guy has a weird face in this picture. How unfortunate.

Hey, this sequel actually takes place at the same place! Truth University. Shit, it even has the same two frats vying for attention, with the good guys being the same frat, and the bad guys being the same frat. How edgy.

Well, DJ from the first film has long graduated. Despite being made a few years later, this actually occurs many years later. The thetas are on another losing streak, and they are the number 2 team, again. How familiar. This time, Chance (Collins Pennie) is their new recruit in training! He doesn’t have as many cool new friends as DJ either, so he is really the only guy that matters. He for sure wants to step too, unlike DJ, despite both originally being street dancers. Oh yeah, Chance isn’t as good as DJ. We see him lose his first battle. He just isn’t that good.

But he will be the hero. Sigh.

Good news about Truth University. They get to host this years national tournament, so they don’t have to travel, I guess. Even better, for the winning team of the tournament, their whole team will receive free scholarships to their university. What? How does a national tournament about step dancing have that sort of dough or like…ability to just do that? I got nothing.

There is some random drama. Chance’s uncle (Keith David) runs a restaurant and wants him to work on Homecoming weekend! Despite the fact that he could win free college. Oh yeah, Chance wants to add more modern hip hop dancing to the step dancing. That sounds similar.

He has a love interest (Tika Sumpter), a frat leader (Pooch Hall), and a frat leader enemy (Stephen Boss).

Oh god, another weird face. Everyone in this movie has a weird face.

So much similar. So much the same. Yet oh so different.

Let’s see, the plot for this movie, although similar, is a lot worse. The whole movie is darker. No, not skin color. No, not evil. Just literally darker, like they added bull shit filters.

The dancing is a lot worse. The ending was more painful to watch than anything, as their final final performances lacked like, any actual stepping. Just a whole bunch of weird ninja and weird shit. What?

Columbus Short from the first film made a cameo, that was cool. What wasn’t cool was everything else. This movie barely had any dancing, let alone stepping in it. Pitiful plot, poor drama, shitty acting for everyone. Even Keith David. Poor Keith David.

So much shit. So much worse than the first movie. So much fucking disappointment.

0 out of 4.

I love the summer. It lets me watch all the things I missed, and all the things I didn’t even know existed. Did you know there was a remake of Fame? No, not that TV show, like 2009 a new Fame movie. Hooray?

Yeah, I never saw the original. Or the show. Or the Broadway version. But I know this one is classified as a musical, and I like musicals, so fuck it.

The potential seems high for dance punching and fighting! Classic West Side Story. Just like the original Fame, I have been told, this story is told in a similar style. It is just a small group of friends in learning how to perform high school. No, it is a few different people who might not share social groups. It is split into 5 parts, of which are nicely labeled, I think. Audition, Freshman Year, Sophomore Year, Junior Year, Senior Year.

We get to see a few students over their careers in the high school, and what makes them tick. Like Jenny Garrison (Kay Panabaker, who you may remember from No Ordinary Family and younger sister of Danielle Panabaker). She is some sort of actor who can’t less lose. This Marco kid (Asher Book) tried to date her for two years and she finally relents. When she takes a card from a big time actor, who might give her a part, Marco is jealous. But she goes to him anyways, basically gets sexually harassed, and Marco can’t stand that commitment and leaves her.

Wait what? Way to be a douche Marco.

Or Kevin (Paul McGill). He came from bumfuck Iowa to be a dancer. He isn’t that good, yet somehow still accepted into the program. People make fun of him. Alice (Kherington Payne) outshines him. His senior year, his teacher won’t give him a recommendation because he is that bad, so he tries that suicide thing. What? How the hell could you be in a dance school for four years if you aren’t good enough?

Let’s try again. Denise (Naturi Naughton) and Malik (Collins Pennie) are both lying to their parents. Denise’s thinks the school is so much more uptight and she’d practice cello 24/7. Malik’s mom thinks he goes to a regular school (what?). Turns out Denise can sing, so Malik and Victor (Walter Perez) put her vocals on a track they are making, which gets played at a club. Alright! But when local producers hear it, they only like her vocals, not their work. Whoops.

Neil (Paul Iacono) wants to be a director, makes documentaries, gets a job to make an indie short film! But really, he just got scammed out of his money. Fuck.

These are all kind of depressing. I don’t want to go on anymore. But hey. Charles S. Dutton is in this movie as random teacher guy. That’s something?

Kay is the most famous actress in this, yet I couldn’t find her doing artsy things.
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Oh hey, yeah, I gave reckless spoilers in that review, because no one is going to watch it. No one. If you planned on it, stop right now. It is a jumbled mess. The music is bad. The dancing is whatever. I cared nothing about any of the characters, and just waited for it to be over.

None of the plot lines were particularly good, but they had no chance with so little being told about each person over a four year period. Even if I wanted to care, I couldn’t. Most of them got shit on throughout the years too, in various ways. But because so little time is on every single person, plot lines also get forget about and just ignored for the end of the movie.

How the hell are all these non talented kids getting into a program like this? That is a stupid plot line. Bad movie. Bad.

0 out of 4.