REVIEWED - STEP UP: RELEASED five years ago, Save the Last Dance was an appealing mix of dance and romance involving an aspirant ballerina from a white bourgeois background in Chicago and a black hip-hop dancer from the opposite side of the tracks.
Duane Adler, who co-wrote it, exhibits an evident commitment to recycling in the screenplay for Step Up, which is formed as minor variations on the same theme crossed with elements from Fame.
This time the setting is Baltimore and the poor boy is white. Played by Channing Tatum, a gangly beanpole in the Josh Hartnett mould, Tyler is caught damaging the Maryland School for the Arts and sentenced to community service with janitorial work there. The star student is rich girl Nora (Jenna Dewan), who is preparing her terpsichorean performance for the end-of-term showcase when her dance partner just happens to turn up on crutches.
Nora auditions six other male dancers, who demonstrate such ineptitude that one wonders how they ever qualified for the academy, and it's only a matter of time before she reluctantly takes on Tyler as a temporary replacement. As is de rigeuer for such a scenario, the movie cuts between mealtimes in their respective homes to underline their contrasting economic circumstances. It goes without saying that the relationship between Nora and Tyler is initially antagonistic.
One does not need to be clairvoyant to suspect that Tyler, in the venerable tradition of Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street, is going in there a nobody and likely to come out a star, and that the frostiness between him and Nora will evaporate into a deep and meaningful love affair.
The only significant adults are two middle-aged women reduced to pursing their lips in disapproval whenever Tyler enters a room, and it's hard to see what attracted the generally adventurous Rachel Griffiths to play one of these thankless roles, as the school's prim, snooty director.
The film's director, Anne Fletcher, doubles as its choreographer, and the final dance sequence is, mercifully, uninterrupted by superfluous editing, providing a belated but mildly welcome respite from the cliche-strewn screenplay.
