Update on Center Stage 2: Turn It Up

We take a good movie about ballet dancers, not a movie with the greatest plot or acting, but still, a good movie. Suddenly, 8 years after its release, we decide that now is the time to make a sequel. We add a goofy subtitle and a cliche hip hop vs. ballet plot. And we have our sequel: Center Stage 2: Turn It Up.

From what I understand, the movie will premiere on Oxygen in November and be released on DVD in January.

In this movie, Cooper's company had its funding cut and fallen apart and he has returned to American Ballet Academy to teach. Kate, a "self taught dance prodigy" (How can you be self taught as a ballet dancer? Or is she a hip hop dancer? Both?), who is a hip hop/ballet fusion dancer is determined to be accepted in to the school and teach everyone to love hip hop as well as ballet even though she is socially ostracized because of her hip hop dancing... or something. Then, she meets Tommy, a hockey player who has also been accepted in to ABA and they end up dating.

My prediction: the ending number will be the hockey equivalent of "Get 'Cha Head In The Game" with 540s, head spins, and pirouettes thrown in.

To say I'm disappointed in what this movie will probably turn out to be is an understatement. Not only is the plot so hugely overused (hello, every dance movie in the past five years), but the plot and characters of this film seem to be completely different and not at all related, with the exception of Cooper and Jonathon.

I'm actually debating whether or not I want to see this. A bad movie is a bad movie, but when it is a sequel to one of your favorite movies that you've loved for a looooooooong time and are somewhat emotionally attached to (I know, I know, it really isn't THAT great), it could have a dramatic effect and cause me to hate the first movie in retrospect. Sigh.

I'll probably at least NetFlix it just to see if they got Ethan Stiefel to spin on his head. Oh, and because I'm the kind of ballet nerd that notices things like this, at least in the above picture, Jodie (Amanda Schull) is wearing Freed studio IIs in size 4 1/2 with a soft shank.

Stay on your toes,

Selly