Como Ela Dança

This film is shockingly underrated on IMDb. Like so many films, this isn't Shawshank. But it's a reasonably good, if predictable, dance competition / personal growth film. If you want to spend an hour and a half watching a sort of 8 Mile for a female step dancer, than I think you'll like it.

Judging from the IMDb ratings, my guess is that this movie was approaching the top 250, and was "vote bombed" with many 1s, as happens to so many films that aren't about the mob, don't have special effects, or include non-white or non-straight characters.

It's an American film, but it's not a US film. Set mostly in Toronto the cues are subtle, and some audiences may think it's set entirely in the US just because the final competition is in the border city of Detroit.

I liked the music. I liked the dance (but not convinced it's worth $50,000 ... but what do I know). The characters were easy on the eyes.

I do agree the title sucks. I don't remember anyone in the film saying those words, and it should have an "s". (No, it's not a foreign language).

There's not a lot to hate about this film (and let's be honest, a vote of 1 means you hated it) so I can only assume that it's an expression of hate for the kind of people in it, and that's sad.

While it's nice to see a Canadian movie funded by the government that isn't another gawd-awful and boring art movie, "How She Move" isn't that much more comfortable to sit through than your typical Canadian movie. For starters, the movie looks HORRIBLE, with most of the movie depicted with washed-out colors. Some scenes taking place during night are so dark it's hard to make out what's going on. The movie also sounds bad at times, with some dialogue obviously dubbed during the movie's post-production period. Though even if the sound were better, the dialogue would still sound horrible. As one critic pointed out, no one here has a real conversation or expresses themselves to become a fleshed-out character. If you still want to see the movie for the dance and music sequences, you should be warned that the soundtrack is unexceptional, and the dance sequences are lacking juice due to their disappointing choreography and directing. Only worth watching if you want to know why Canada's population for the most part does not embrace its homegrown movies.

With title like this you know you get pretty much lot of junk. Acting bad. Script bad. Director bad. Grammar bad.

Movie make lot of noise that really not music and lot of people yell. Movie make bad racial stereotype. Why come every movie with black hero have drug addict? Why come hero always have to dance to be success? Why come famous rapper always have to be in dance movie? Why come letter "s" can't be in title?

Hollywood need to stop dumb down audience and make movie that have people with brain who know how speak proper English.

Do self favor and not go see.

This film represents every aspiring Canadian performance artist's dream- the chance to be noticed in the United States. To facilitate this ambition, all levels of Canadian Government funnel huge amounts of money to Canadian talent so that they can create vehicles to hock their wares south of the border. Nevermind that the work itself seldom represents the land or the people it comes from.

"How She Move" is a curious creature, a Canadian film that actually doesn't try to be set in America, or be about Americans. Notice my choice of words, though- it is an absence of a negative, not an outright positive. Even though Brooklin and Baltimore are mentioned directly by name, and a large section of the film is set (though not filmed) in Detroit, the only references to Canada are oblique: "T-Dot" "Scarborough" and "Jane Street Junta". Too bad the average American film-goer has no idea what those terms mean.

Even the one shot of Canadian money is the backside of our $20.00 bill, the one Canadian banknote that is the same colour as the US Greenback.

The settings are generic North American urban ghetto, with the high irony of the actual Jane-Finch corridor exterior shots not being gritty enough to pretend they have street cred, so the film crew travels to Hamilton Ontario to ramp up the film's "ghettoness". Not one exterior establishing shot to proudly proclaim "This is Canada".

At least the interior shots of the characters homes are authentic and ring true to some tenements in the Jane-Finch area.

The film even downplays the Caribbean origins of most of the characters, but not to any degree that it downplays its Canadian-ness. But, "downplay" is not "ignore" and there are many subtle references that only someone familiar with the Caribbean colony in Toronto would understand. And I use the phrase "Caribbean Colony" with deliberate purpose.

The story itself is generic to many American films of the same ilk. It is still a valid story, in a sense, since various methods of uplift have always been aspirations of marginalized communities. It is as true in Toronto as any other city in North America.

And the story is told with uncommon passion and integrity, from the characters' and actors' levels.

What really shines in this film is the showcase of Toronto talent. To be sure, all this talent would love to kiss Canada goodbye for a lucrative career in the U.S., but they grew up here, and here is where they are currently shining! That too is part of Canadian culture, but no American would understand that.

To my American friends, I mean no slight- I personally think you are big enough to embrace a true Canadian story if it has the production values that you are used to in your cinema. The mavens in Hollywood are so conservative though that you continue to get spoon-fed pap, and only rarely are you served true art with a degree of risk attached. When films have to make back a $150 Million budget, the owners of that money tend to be risk adverse! This film is getting a wide release in the United States. MTV Films has had a hand in it's financing or distribution, hence the reason why its Canadian-ness is being downplayed. But, in 2008, this is the best Canada can do in bringing its stories to you...by making them seem like YOUR stories.

What a timid little country Canada is! Couldn't any of my tax money put one Canadian flag in a scene? A real TTC bus? A shot of CW Jefferies Collegiate? A Jane Street or Driftwood Avenue street sign? How much risk is there in that?

I watch them all.

It's not better than the amazing ones (_Strictly Ballroom_, _Shall we dance?_ (Japanese version), but it's completely respectable and pleasingly different in parts.

I am an English teacher and I find some of the ignorance about language in some of these reviews rather upsetting. For example: the "name should scream don't watch. 'How she move.' Since when can movie titles ignore grammar?"

There is nothing inherently incorrect about Caribbean English grammar. It's just not Canadian standard English grammar. Comments about the dialogue seem off to me. I put on the subtitles because I'm a Canadian standard English speaker, so I just AUTOMATICALLY assumed that I would have trouble understanding all of it. It wasn't all that difficult and it gave a distinctly different flavour as the other step movies I have seen were so American.

I loved that this movie was set in Toronto and, in fact, wish it was even more clearly set there. I loved that the heroine was so atypically cast. I enjoyed the stepping routines. I liked the driven Mum character. I felt that many of the issues in the movie were addressed more subtly than is characteristic of dance movies.

In summary, if you tend to like dance movies, then this is a decent one. If you have superiority issues about the grammar of the English standard you grew up speaking, your narrow mind may have difficulty enjoying this movie.