Dance Flick (*)

Dance Flick. 83 mins. PG-13. Directed by Damien Dante Wayans. Written by a Bunch of Wayans Brothers. Starring a Bunch of Wayans Brothers, Shoshana Bush, Essence Atkins, Amy Sedaris, David Alan Grier, and Chris Elliott.

No genre has worn out its welcome over the past few years as much as the spoof movie. The Wayans Brothers are to blame for a lot of this. Though Scary Movie had some good gags, and started a trend with the hard R-rated gross-out gags that are so prevalent today, it spawned three unnecessary sequels as well as the careers of the utterly talentless guys behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and other atrocities. All of these spoofs pale in comparison to The Naked Gun and Hot Shots films. The problem with the Scary Movies of today, and those of its ilk, is that they confuse parody with mere exaggeration. The filmmakers need to learn that they can't just replicate a scene from a famous movie in order to create comedy - mere reference is not enough. Dance Flick comes from the second generation of Wayans Brothers, and they seem to be making the same dumb mistakes as the first generation. It takes on dance movies like Step Up and Save the Last Dance, and the percentage of jokes that actually stick is about 2% (and they're all in the trailer). By the end, having exhausted its flimsy premise, Dance Flick trots out "spoofs" of non-dance movies, Black Snake Moan (what?!!) and Twilight, for no good reason. If there's any justice in the world, Dance Flick will officially kill these lame-ass spoof movies and leave them for dead, never to arise again.

-John