5.5/10 (Or 7.5/10)

The next chapter of the longest dance series ever shows most of the stars returning from the previous Step Up movies to form a super team to compete for a 3 year show in Las Vegas. Step Up All In is only the 2nd film of the Step Up Franchise that i have actually seen, and i have to say that it at least did a good job of keeping me well entertained. The reason i gave this movie two ratings is because the first one is if you rank it as an overall movie, and the second one is to rate it as a dance movie only. As a dance film, it absolutely succeeds with the best dancing i have ever seen. The finale match between our protagonists known as Elementrix facing off against the antagonists, The Grim Reapers, makes for the best dance battle i have ever seen in a film. I did enjoy You Got Served a little more than this one, but a close second isn’t bad for a genre that i feel like i have seen too much in. The stages and sets are also very well done, and that has to do with the lights of Las Vegas being a beautiful setting for such a film. The storyline isn’t anything very different from what you see in other Step Up films and i think that is what really hurts it. If the next Step Up film could make a story different from a crew facing off against a villain crew for a prize, they could really take the whole series in a different direction. I know it seems hard to do this as there are only so many avenues you can go with the dance genre, but i think the most creative stories always come from that extra push. The acting isn’t anything amazing as you would expect it to be for this film. It’s really just a bunch of real life dancers playing themselves for the camera. The cliche moments of breaking out into dance in public places is laughable for all the wrong reasons. On top of it, you get the corniest dialogue that makes it sound like the two people competing are about to do a knife or gun fight. One credit i will give Channing Tatum is that he at least brought the feel of a superstar who brought some fraction of emotion to a ridiculous plot. Without Channing Tatum, the appeal of this faltering franchise fades, except for the dance sequences. That is something that the Step Up Franchise will always have. It’s kind of nice to see a series where the main characters return as most (Tatum included) usually run for the hills whenever they hit it big. The running time of 1 hour and 45 minutes was a little long for a plot that you can pretty much predict how it will roll in the first ten minutes. One thing that kept it interesting especially during the dragging second half was the steamy romantic chemistry between the two main stars, Ryan Guzman and Briana Evigan. Their powerful emotion on the dance floor but dry emotion in script reading show two things. The first is that these two are definitely world trained dancers, and that area is where they feel the most comfortable. They say so much in an up close face to face shot on the dance floor that they had trouble communicating during an awkward 105 minutes. I did not see the movie in 3D, and i don’t think there were enough cool shots by watching it to really think it mattered. There were some old school 3D in your face shots with sand and confetti, but i think they are few and far between for paying an extra $4. Overall, Step Up All In isn’t as horrible a film as i originally thought i was in for. It’s not a good film by any means, but it’s not a bad sit if you are in the theater for a date night. If you really have to see it, i recommend just waiting till dollar theater. The big screen is a good experience for this kind of film, but there is no need to drop a ten dollar bill to see the same movie you have seen four times already. You don’t go to a Step Up film to see Oscar winning performances. You go to see remarkable dance moves and beats that always keep your toes tapping. In that perspective, Step Up All In delivers time after time.