Dancin': It's On!

DANCIN' IT'S ON (2015) is amateurish on most levels and boasts some of the worst acting I've seen on the big screen in decades, but it has crude charm and a consistent vitality that I found quite endearing and loads of fun. It's set in an alternate universe (identified on screen as Panama City Beach, Florida) where random people break out into spontaneous dance numbers at all hours of the day at the drop of a hat. What's not to love? The hoary plot has to do with a rich girl who loves to dance staying at her father's hotel for the summer who falls in love with a dishwasher who's a great dancer while her disapproving father has lined up his snotty protégé as the intended suitor for her, leading to all sorts of class conflict clichés that went out of favor decades ago. All this is just an excuse for two things: a steady stream of dance numbers and frequent infomercial spots extolling the virtues of Panama City Beach as a tourist resort. That's actually not a bad trade-off, especially since it leads to an exhilarating dance finale at the Florida Statewide Dance Contest where true love wins out and competing couples dance their hearts out.

Witney Carson, from the TV show, "Dancing with the Stars," plays the lead character, Jennifer, and she's awfully cute and a skilled dancer even if her line readings sound like...well, line readings! Her co-star, with the unwieldy name of Chehon Wespi-Tschopp, actually puts some effort into creating his character, Ken, the dishwasher-dancer, and deserves some props for trying, even if some acting lessons are still in order. He hails from the show, "So You Think You Can Dance." The other young performers are noticeably lacking in charisma, although the dreadlocked Russell Ferguson, also from "So You Think You Can Dance," brings abundant good cheer and punctuates the proceedings with trademark arm and hand moves from the "Electric Boogie" school of dance that flourished 30 years ago. He plays the youthful but all-knowing hotel doorman, known as "the Captain," and shows up as the MC at the big dance contest.

My favorite sequence finds poor Jennifer, brooding after a breakup, sitting alone on a bench on a darkened shopping street in downtown Panama City Beach at night, suddenly interrupted by a row of SUVs turning on their lights and a Latin band, complete with percussion section, suddenly appearing to perform while a hundred dancers descend on the street to execute a highly-choreographed number into which they pull the awestruck Jennifer. Now THAT's an alternate universe I can enjoy.

The only name actors in it are Gary Daniels, an English martial arts performer known to me from FIST OF THE NORTH STAR (1995) and THE EXPENDABLES (2010), who plays Jennifer's father, and David Winters, renowned for playing A-rab, one of the Jets in WEST SIDE STORY (1961). Winters also co-wrote, produced and directed the film. He appears as an elderly hotel resident who reveals his dance background to the young leads at a crucial moment and offers his assistance as they prepare for the dance contest. At one point, Ken, the dishwasher, looks up Winters' character on the computer and finds an old dance clip of his from a TV show from decades ago. I wish I knew where that clip is from. Winters dedicates the film to Sadie Winters, presumably his mother, "who is up there dancing with the angels," and to Gene Kelly, the legendary Hollywood musical star, who inspired him to take up dance.

I saw the film at a 42nd Street multiplex on a weekday afternoon knowing very little about it beforehand. As far as I know, it didn't even get reviewed. I was the only one in the theater. I attended an advance screening of SPECTRE at the same theater later that day, packed with people, and I can assure you I had more fun with DANCIN' IT'S ON than I did with SPECTRE.

As of this writing, I'm the only one I know who's even heard of this film, let alone seen it. This has all the makings of a cult film, but it needs a way to find its cult. If any film qualifies to be this generation's BREAKIN' 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, it's this one.

Somehow the director and sometimes actor David Winter of SPACE MUTINY (one of the hallowed classics in Mystery Science Theater 3000 lore) was unfrozen from his peaceful cryogenic sleep and was tasked in 2015 to make a dopey Step Up style dance movie. Lo and behold he concocts the kind of material that lucid nightmares are made of: ADR that would make Tommy Wiseau cringe, acting where it seems like Winter drank up their personalities to the point that the actors appeared like pod people out of a 1950s movie (which I might add Winter may have acted in!) and dancing which, while Im sure a little better than I can do, is still at best laughably funny and at worst a cacophony of off styles and choppy editing (ooh the climax ooh).

In other words, Winter may have topped himself from his Mutiny days; this is shockingly inept and terrible, a movie that might be simply forgettable crap if not for the fact that it got an *actual theatrical release on more than 100 screens* (though it somehow missed the missile silo known as Rotten Tomatoes). It features all of the separate elements that are part of what makes a movie a "movie"- romance, spectacle, location (Panama City and if you don't get that's where this is don't worry a montage will show you), choreography (in a matter of speaking), "humor", uh, ladies on stilts walking around a lobby, a token black bellhop who dances whenever someone he talks to walks off screen)- but its as if the cook putting this stew together hit his head on solid concrete and then threw it all on to a final cut pro time-line and said 'eh ***k it." This is a The Room level disaster.

I almost wish I could go into all of the things that make this so awful but simultaneously uproariously monumentally wall shatteringly funny but you got to see (and hear) the miasma to believe it. This group of Community theater dance players (with a forgotten Z level action hero as the strangely one dimensional "fighter" cum hotel owner father of the girl who falls for the - gasp - dishwasher dancer at the hotel he runs and the father cant stand the double gasp she may like him!) is among the least talented and pushed to less than zero degrees.

Oh and not to mention all of the super on the nose songs and things like the guy who goes through the pains of love (hint the hotel owners daughter is forced into a relationship with a preppie manager at the hotel) having an ANGRY DANCE ACROSS THE CITY MONTAGE! Or how people randomly, in this surreal candy-colored-clown-surreal landscape break out into dancing and food fights and the lighting looks like it's by a guy who's never thought about things like a THREE POINT LIGHTING set, oh, nevermind.

The key thing is this is sincere, and because of that it commits to its worldview which is 100% banana-pants. It deserves to be discovered and have midnight screenings in major cities with people cosplaying as minor characters in the darn thing. Its the stuff cult classic is made of... And its so bad.

It's pretty cool what we have done with artificial intelligence these days. When you ask a computer to make a script for a film about dancing, it's pretty amazing how it could come up with something....wait, what was that? This was written by a person? You mean this was a serious project not some weird attempt at proving A. I. is sentient? Wow. Just wow.

Okay, that changes the tone of this review severely. I mean, I was under the impression that the tourism council of Panama City-in conjunction with other contributors--used an A. I. to make the strangest tourism video ever made. But this was made with legitimate intentions? Well, I am at a loss to continue with this review. I mean, this movie was awful. Just outright awful.

I will say this, it was a pretty good "awful" movie. The dance scenes were fun to watch. The women were largely attractive. The great Gary Daniels is in this film. I mean, It has the goods to be thrown into the pantheon of one of the greatest bad films of all time. If The Room is Citizen Kane, Champagne and Bullets is The Rock and Birdemic is The Birds....then this one has to be akin to Hello Dolly or Guys and Dolls. I don't know, you decide what the good movie equivalent is to it.

Anyway, I have to go to my computer. If this poorly written film can be made, then the bad ideas kicking around in my noodle should also be cogent and sincere.

Oooohhhh a truly terrible movie that I watched to play along with the "How Did This Get Made" podcast. Despite its director being a 50 year veteran of many aspects of the movie industry, but most famously as a choreographer, the film is truly hopeless and I've seen pornography with more convincing acting.

Jennifer (Witney Carson) spends the summer at her father's luxury hotel in Panama City, Florida. The hotel has an odd policy of attracting performers of various disciplines, which appeals to Jennifer as she is a dancer. On her first night she meets Ken (Chehon Wespi-Tschopp), a general dogsbody at the hotel, but who dancing wins admiration. Ken and Jennifer fall in love, much to the disapproval of her father, who prefers preppy Danny (Matt Marr).

Of all the negative points that the film has, the most noticeable is the ADR work. It feels like a foreign film, except it isn't and I'm assuming everyone is ADR'ing their own performance, but there's no life to any of the delivery. Each staccato sentence spoken like the performer was tortured into saying them. To be fair, very few of the performers seem to have been cast for their acting ability. Rather than making actors dance, the decision appears to have been made to make dancers act. Indeed, Witney Carson never acted again, but made her way to "Dancing with The Stars" and both she and Wespi-Tschopp appear to have gotten their starts on another dancing talent show.

There are plenty of other problems with the film though. From acres of stock footage, never more apparent than during the dance competition at the end; the public staring at the camera as we drive endlessly around the high spots that Panama City has to offer; or the general plot - lifted from "Dirty Dancing" but with a bit of any of those "Step Up" films.

Did I hate it though, or did I find it amusingly terrible? With the exception of the last twenty minutes, mostly the later. I'm sure going to enjoy what the HDTGM team make of it.

Yes, it's a TERRIBLE movie, made watchable through the lens of RiffTrax. But it's worth observing that the dancers are fantastic, particularly Chehon Wespi-Tschopp, who has a few moments to shine. The soundtrack, script, acting, sound design, etc., etc., are just awful, but the main actors have some charisma and are exceptional dancers. As a friend observed, it's like having Andrea Bocelli sing a Kidz Bop album.