Battle of the Year

Here we have another dance movie. At first, it seems movies of such genre have exhausted and that there is nothing else to tell about. You expect the story will repeat: there is a huge and important dance event with a fabulous sum of money as a main prize and that can change dancers' life for ever, on the one hand, and there is a dance crew desiring to win this event, on the other hand. Yes, the story is like this, but this time the director have added some moral notions that made this movie acquire some deeper sense and look more interesting and intriguing. Battle of the year is an international b-boying competition where dance crews from all over the world try to get to and get the first place. The point is that for the last 15 years America, homeland of break dance, has not taken any first place. One of the former b-boy dancers (Dante Graham played by Laz Alonso) decides to change this situation. He finds a couch (Couch Blake performed by Josh Holloway) and together they create Dream Team. Couch's main goal is not only to train the guys to win the competition, but his first and principal idea is to make them a team, some kind of dance family where everybody supports each other and ready stand for everyone who is in this crew. Another subtext of this film is "change how you think, change your life". The read line of Battle of the year is that your reality is in your head: you get everything you think about. And the same is about success. If you think about it and act like a successful person, you definitely will get this. And you decide what you put into your head. The movie shows us how their couch tries to change not only his reality, but the guys' one too and how he changes their idea about friendship and other values. At the same time, Blake trains them to be excellent dancers, he doesn't forget about the main purpose why he was hired to train this team. Of course, there are great dance moments, the competition itself is just insane. And it is interesting to see the scale of similar events and different dance techniques. So, if you are a big fan of dancing or dance movies or if you just want to see Chris Brown, his acting, go and watch this movie. By the way, the end is pretty unexpected. I guess very soon we will see the second part of this film.

Battle of the Year... somehow didn't have the soul of Stomp the Yard... should've killed Breezy off in the very beginning... that would have fixed it... But seriously... so disappointing... I don't know what went wrong... I was watching and hoping something would happen... and "second sucks" ??? Maybe the music is to blame... Maybe the whole concept of America representing all other countries was more of the focus... Maybe having the "Bring it on" star as the on-screen choreographer... Maybe the "You think you can dance" approach for the Dream Team... Is it a movie about team work?? I'm so confused... I think the major setback was in the end we don't know what's the movie about... Josh Holloway saved the movie, without whom the movie would have been unwatchable.

If you lose your passion for something, you might feel lost. So does our main actor here (you may know him from a TV show called Lost), who has to train a few kids to do something that seems unachievable. Mainly because some of his pupils didn't lose their focus, they didn't have it to begin with.

But the movie does have a story, even though we have a lot of characters that have to fit into the story, you do get a bit of their background and the movie does make sense. The dancing is OK, with some wicked things/stunts being performed. The story is more than decent and is fun to watch. Overall something people who like "battle" movies might very well enjoy

Well, what can I say, you reading this review will be a better usage of time than watching this disaster. A film which adds no value to your motivation factor, it didn't even motivated me to pump a muscle. The choreography was good but the cinematography took the fun away from it. The dialogs were unsynchronized and looked forceful as if the actors lost interest in the middle. Abrupt ending with stupid scenes which have no connection with the movie, throwing love and family angles just to touch every heart(FAIL!), quickly ending the BATTLE which was deemed to be the most important and much awaited part of the movie and below par acting of almost all the actors, makes BATTLE OF THE YEAR *THE WORST MOVIE OF 2013* I watched so far. A complete PONZI scheme. Save your time, money and effort. Stay away from this one. (Yes, Its nothing like STEP UP)

This is my first review to IMDb, all the time I had thought that my first one would be about whether an amazing movie or the worst. And beyond any doubt, this is one of the worsts I've ever watched. I've been waiting for a long time to watch this movie and still can't believe it was such a terrible movie. I am as sick as a parrot. It was waste of time, literally it was. I wanted to watch this movie especially for Josh Holloway but even he has no special acting. There is nothing special about this movie at all, may be except the results of the competition but it was not enough. Acting was not good, dancing was bad and the music was not good too.

It was completely a disappointment for me. I gave 3 points, just because I thought that at least I watched it from the beginning to the end. I try not to see the glass as half empty.

To sum up, if you really don't want to waste your time, don't watch this movie guys.