Annakin

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan are hot hot hot. Absurdly pretty, and they can both dance. While a teen dance movie was not my #1 choice, it was a pretty enjoyable film. No big surprises, but it fulfilled what it set out to do with admirable skill and pace. The 'white-boy hood' character threads were well executed by the extremely handsome Tatum- as the 'White Hood Kid' can be a character that is very hard to swallow and easy to play terribly. While there is lots of dancing, there is not so much that the whole film feels like a support structure to display dancing, which would bore me to tears. Mario is interesting to watch and has good arcs. I have a crush on Rachel Griffiths so I'm biased there, but one of the few faults in the movie is her character evolves unrealistically... she develops into a place of compassion from one of hate without much to make that change. All and all, a surprisingly fun movie.

Firstly, Uma rules. Damn she's good. There are about 12 notes (an octave, good for her) that she just nails. Love her. And Bryan Greenberg, is pretty good (and pretty). Jon Abrahams is Jon AbraHams, consistent, cocky, he plays that guy well. I want to say 'stop with the fedora' bit, but, realizing I'm just being a jerk, he wears them well. Fedoras look cool when you run a major hip-hop label (good luck, but seriously- good luck). Ben Younger makes interesting choices- keeping his actors on the slow play, then rushing in. Low key, highly compressed sound design and funny pseudo-subtle color timing flares. Really nice breaths in the narrative taken with exterior shots and art house sound recording (interior/exterior sound gags). Directorial, but well played. It's heavy handed in the referential department, in a self-serving pat on the back "I know who so and so is" kind of way, which makes punk ass critics feel good about themselves. Smart but annoying. Oh man, I almost forgot, Meryl Streep is Gibraltar. She could play Screech and it would be brilliant, although her performance was (suprisingly) uneven. She wavered between heebtastic and waspalicious at times. Maybe that's intentional, she's that good, but i dunno. All in all, this is another Ben Younger film which will be seen many times over many years. His films are never disposable- they all have life... pop... resonance. He's not a brilliant director... yet, but it will be great to watch him develop. I hope he takes a path that leads him into work that is made to entertain, stories told to the viewer through the film, not the director. God forbid the Hollywood Machine lets him go self indulgent bananas and we end up with another Paul Thomas Anderson droid. I'm just sensitive to feeling the directors breath on my neck when I trying to watch a damn movie, that's all. If you like film, see it, and probably in the theater. It's nicely shot, and the title sequence deserves better than the living room screen (even if it is a 50" plasma). One more thing- the Uma boob tease is brutal, just brutal. I found myself longing something terrible to catch just a glimpse of areola.