Film review: Make Your Move

Make Your Move
Starring: Derek Hough, BoA
Director: Duane Adler
Category: IIA

Could there be a more practical solution to a deadly family rivalry than having their Romeo and Juliet equivalents bust a few moves? The answer is apparently "no" in Make Your Move, a frivolous dance romance laced with class and ethnic themes that manages to be just as formulaic as you'd expect from this genre.

The film is directed and written by Duane Adler, who holds the distinction of having written the same movie time and again for over a decade. You can also "thank" him for 2001's Save the Last Dance, 2006's Step Up and 2008's Make It Happen .

Make Your Move only comes alive when its characters burst into dance. Between the dance sequences lies the embarrassment that is the story proper - one which involves a pair of star-crossed lovers from duelling New York gangs who run the city's hottest underground nightclubs. The two fall in love during a dance battle, but their story, perhaps expectedly, can't hold a candle to that of West Side Story.

Our hero is Donny, a New Orleans-raised tap dancer who has just been released from prison after being sent down for getting mixed up with a street scam. The role is played by dancer-choreographer Derek Hough, a three-time winner of the American television show Dancing with the Stars. He can dance, but is so out of his depth as a leading man that he almost leaves you craving for Channing Tatum.

After spotting a new dance trend at the New York club of his "brother" Nick (Wesley Jonathan), Donny breaks his six-month parole and subsequently falls for Aya (South Korean pop star BoA), the younger sister of Nick's buddy-turned-nemesis Kaz, played byKorean-American actor Will Yun Lee.