Review of Dance Flick (2009) by Chads — 22 May 2009

And now Keenan Ivory Wayans has something in common with the late Stanley Kubrick. Both filmmakers make reference to the musical "Singin' in the Rain". In "Dance Flick", Mr. Moody(Marlon Wayans) uses the word "dignity" a lot as he talks about the stereotypical "Negro"-specific roles he accepted during Hollywood's unenlightened years to a classroom full of bored students.

Half a century ago, Gene Kelly's silent film star stood on the red carpet at a gala premiere for his latest movie and says, "Dignity. Always dignity," to describe his years in vaudeville as a burlesque act.

Both proclaimers are being ironical. "Classy" is an aesthetic that has never been synonymous with Wayans' filmography(the geyser of semen that pins the "Scary Movie" franchise girl to the ceiling in an "American Beauty" parody comes immediately to mind), but his treatment of the immortal dance flick is classy, especially when you compare it to Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange", in which Malcolm McDowell sings the titular song while viciously beating an old man and woman during a home invasion.

What's not classy, however, is how he takes away Halle Berry's dignity by dredging up her old "Hit and Run Halle" public image in an admittedly funny throwaway gag. That's so 2000.

That's so antithetical to the significance of Berry's breakthrough Oscar-win for Marc Foster's "Monsters Ball". Acceptance speech histrionics aside, Berry shed light on the indignity of her thespian predecessors who were regulated to playing "colored folks", such as a cotton-picker(Mr.

Moody's biggest role) and other roles of its ilk. "Dance Flick" has a sociological disconnect, but it's typical of this filmmaker's no holds barred approach towards his own people(e.

G. Regina King as the disruptive movie patron who gets murdered in "Scary Movie").