Step Up 3-D: a stream of consciousness response

So, last night Netflix's streaming contract with Starz ended. A number of classics disappeared from the Netflix Instant catalogue, including Scarface, Scream, Beetlejuice, Party Down, and Spartacus. I will miss all of these movies/tv shows (especially Party Down), but for whatever reason, I saw fit to say goodbye to Starz with Step Up 3-D. 

And there was much rejoicing.

And I regret nothing, because this movie is everything I dreamed and more. 

• Is the lead character (to whom I will refer as Dougbert) a budding filmmaker making a documentary about his dance teammates?
• Are his dance teammates a multi-coloured and multi-racial ragtag bunch of misfits?
• Is there an unacknowledged romance blooming between two friends who have known each other their whole lives? And one of whom is named Moose?
•  Is there a parkour training deck?
• Will the budding filmmaker find the courage to show his documentary to people thanks to his new girlfriend Natalie?

So follow here, if you dare, for my stream-of-consciousness response to Step Up 3-D.

In defense of: Chasing Amy

I don't often take it upon myself to defend Kevin Smith. He doesn't excite me as a filmmaker, and I've long since tired of his tic-filled writing style. (See also: Aaron Sorkin, Quentin Tarantino, and to an extent David Mamet.) I can't deny that he made a big impression on the independent film scene, but I just don't care for or about his movies. Except one: Chasing Amy.


Besides An Evening with Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy is Smith's best rated film, clocking in at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's by far his most mature, original, and coherent work. It's also one of his most divisive and controversial, especially within the LGBT community.


To sum up: Comic book artist Holden meets fellow comic book artist Alyssa Jones at some Comic-Con Lite panel, and Holden is instantly smitten. He and his writing partner/best friend Banky are stunned to realize that Alyssa is a lesbian; Holden pursues a friendship and subsequently a romantic relationship with Alyssa; Banky voices his homophobic disapproval throughout. [Here there be spoilers.] When Holden discovers that he is far from the first man Alyssa has slept with, he goes into a conservative douchebag tailspin and the two break up.


(Cards on the table: I have a definite bias towards this movie, largely due to Ben Affleck's Holden. Holden is the mascot for The Guys I Loved In High School - witty, staunchly homosocial, and geekily into comics.)

Jersey pompadour optional. Goatee not recommended.

This is awkward, because I know that Joey Lauren Adams is the titular Amy and everything, but queer women couldn't ask for a worse representative. Alyssa is abrasive, flighty, self-serious, and selfish. Her sexual orientation is presented as almost whim-based, driven more by curiosity and sexual appetite than anything; and she knowingly and aggressively baits the innocently by-standing Holden, without particularly caring about the emotional turmoil she's causing him. In short, she displays just about every stereotype there is about bisexuals. 

She's also a super-obnoxious karaoke-er.

Still, at no point does Alyssa abandon her queer identity, whether she's dating a woman or a man. And she doesn't give off the impression of someone who's fooling around with women while she waits for The Right Man - after she and Holden break up, we see her with a woman again. She dates whoever she wants, she is who she is, and stays fiercely unapologetic about it in the face of Holden's disdain. A woman who refuses to compromise herself for her romantic partner is a lamentably rare sight in movies.


Where my squeamishness comes in is that the characters and their various stereotypes are written by and filtered through a straight man's perspective. That perspective, just because it's an outsider's, feels clumsy at best and sometimes downright offensive. If only because of an in-group-out-group bias, a straight man trafficking in stereotypes about bisexual women is qualitatively different from a bisexual woman doing the same.


But even that is complicated, because Kevin Smith knows that his perspective is limited, and he tries to address it in various ways. One of them is a direct appeal from Silent Bob, who lectures Holden on the dangers of clinging to his narrow views on sexuality. One of them is actually one of my favourite scenes in any movie - Alyssa and Banky trading sex scar stories in a sweetly raunchy spin on the Indianapolis scene in Jaws. You basically just watch two people gleefully connect over past awkwardness, and for maybe two minutes they see each other as comrades instead of rivals. Unfortunately, Holden's innate and truly insidious conservatism jolts Banky back into his bro-y posturing, and he can't feel comfortable without throwing in one last offensive faux-question. What I'm trying to say is, Smith is very conscious of his limitations, and those limitations are kind of the point of the movie.


As I've probably mentioned before, effort makes a huge difference for me. Kevin Smith was clearly trying to step out of his comfort zone, exorcise some personal demons, and foster some good honest dialogue. That's more than you can say for most romantic comedies, which are content to regurgitate the same tropes about "the battle of the sexes" that were getting old when Jackie Gleason was trotting them out. As far as I'm concerned, Chasing Amy a thoughtful, funny, romantic, and complicated movie. It delights and discomfits me in roughly equal measure. And damnit, I love it for that.