Dance Flick is a 2009 American musical comedy film directed by Damien Dante Wayans in his directorial debut and written by and starring many members of the Wayans family. A parody of the dance film genre, the plot follows a suburban girl who moves to the inner city and teams up with street dancer to form a dance crew to compete in a high-stakes battle to pay off a debt to a drug lord. The film was set for release in the United States on February 6, 2009, and changed to May 22, 2009. The film received mixed-to-negative reviews from critics, despite the moderate financial success.
Contents
Plot
Suburban girl Megan White (Shoshana Bush) gets into a series of misadventures when she moves to the inner-city and pursues dance. A nerdy street boy named Thomas Uncles (Damon Wayans Jr.) is passionate about street dancing, but he is stuck working for a drug lord (David Alan Grier).
Megan later befriends Thomas’ sister Charity (Essence Atkins) who has a baby and poor parenting skills. Charity has her own issues dealing with her dimwitted "baby daddy" (Shawn Wayans) who also is a bad parent. Once Megan and Thomas spend more time together, they become dance partners and begin to fall in love.
Cast
Shoshana Bush as Megan White
Damon Wayans Jr. as Thomas Uncles
Essence Atkins as Charity Uncles
Affion Crockett as A-Con
Shawn Wayans as Baby Daddy
Amy Sedaris as Ms. Cameltoé
David Alan Grier as Sugar Bear
Chelsea Makela as Tracy Transfat
Chris Elliott as Ron White (Megan's Dad)
Brennan Hillard as Jack
Lochlyn Munro as The Coach (Jack's Dad)
Christina Murphy as Nora
Marlon Wayans as Mr. Moody
Kim Wayans as Ms. Dontwannabebothered
Keenen Ivory Wayans as Mr. Stache
Craig Wayans as Truck
Ross Thomas as Tyler Gage
George Gore II as Ray Charles
Tichina Arnold as Aretha Robinson (Ray's Mamma)
Lauren Bowles as Glynn White (Megan's Mom)
Sufe Bradshaw as Keloid
Andrew McFarlane as D
Casey Lee as Undercover Cop
Chaunté Wayans as Free Gas Pedestrian
Release
On the opening weekend (May 22–24), the film ranked at No. 5 in the top 10 with $10,643,536 in 2,450 theaters.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 18% of 95 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3.49/10. The site's consensus reads: "Dance Flick scores a few laughs thanks to the Wayans brothers' exuberance, but it's ultimately a scattershot collection of gags without much direction." On Metacritic, it got a 40/100 "mixed or average" score based on 17 critic reviews. Peter Deburge of Variety wrote that it "delivers just enough laughs to justify its existence". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.