Battle of the Year

You know what my favorite part of the above poster is? Who's face most in the foreground? It's not Chris Brown. It's not Josh Holloway from Lost. It's not even Caity Lotz. No, it's Josh Peck. Okay, fine, he's had a movie or two since his Drake and Josh glory days. So I guess it's okay that he gets a starring role. I didn't know he could dance, did you?

Oh wait. He doesn't dance. At all. He says he can dance. But we never see him dance. He hardly does anything in the movie. I swear to god, he literally has a handful of quasi-inspirational lines at the beginning of the film. And then, nothing. Just nothing. He all but vanishes from the movie, limited to just standing in the background clapping or being unnoticed in the background of dance rehearsals. Really, that's about it. It's actually kindof hilarious how unimportant he was. Let's get real here, we all know that one of the dancers is going to either be disqualified or forced to leave. So that means that Josh Peck, the awkward assistant coach who does nothing, will obviously have to take up the reigns, right? WRONG. Instead, an old dancer is needlessly brought back. In fact, we don't even see him come back. He just appears. Awesome. I gotta hand it to the guy, at least he made probably an enormous pay check from about 20 minutes of screen time.

This movie was about 20 million dollars to make. I'm sorry, but if Cirque du Soleil could make it's 3D film on 25 million dollars, there is absolutely no way your movie needs a 20 million dollar budget. And where did this 20 million dollars come from? I'll give you a hint.

"What's that?"
"It's my new Sony Tablet, it's 10 inches."
"Yo man, check this out, I got a playstation vita!"

At one point, a character hands out gift bags, each of which contain - you guessed it - a plethora of Sony products. What a blatant and disgusting forced product placement. You guys are lucky I just so happen to love my PS Vita...

Onto the actual film. DEAR GOD it was a headache. Cut scenes showing three or four frames littered the movie, showing different aspects of the same damn rehearsal. But at the same time, we never see them suck or improve. We hardly even see them grow as a team the way the movie would have us believe they did. In fact, Chris Browns character has a teary-eyed speech where he declares that (no, I'm not kidding) "at the beginning it was all about me...and now...it's still all about me." Is that supposed to be funny? Because that's literally where the speech ends! And he' s not the only horrendously unlikable character in this film, literally every character just pisses you off. And as if they weren't enough just being themselves to piss you off, try adding a terribly cliche speech about team work and growth and beauty and whatever the hell have you. It's laughable.

Some of my close friends super into the culture tell me that this movie doesn't demonstrate b-boy culture at all. I wouldn't know that. But I will say this - I believe it. And coming from a man with a highly acclaimed documentary on the subject, to have those into the culture reject it for poor representation, bad scripting, and might I mention the incredibly inappropriate 3D, it must be pretty darn terrible.

Rank - 0.5/5