Yes, it's just swapping on archaic cliché (the poor kid in the ritzy school) for another (let's put on a show and save the farm!), but Step Up 3D makes up for it by existing in some kind of psychotropic fantasy world that has no relationship whatsoever to human existence. Luke takes Moose under his wing, and on the younger man's first night - which he was supposed to spend with Camille, being freshman-oriented and all that - he is introduced to Luke's dead parents' multi-story dance club/post-industrial loft where the Pirates - a rag-tag bunch of multi-ethnic types, all the better to set off the lily-white Luke - practice for the upcoming World Jam, and the $100,000 grand prize that is all that stands between the House of Pirates and foreclosure. Luckily, he also catches the attention of Luke (Rick Malambri), head of The Pirates, the Samurai's mortal enemies. He wins, but in doing so incurs the wrath of the local dance crew known as The Samurai. No sooner does Moose promise his asshole parents that he's not going to keep dancing, than he gets involved in an impromptu dance battle right smack dab in the middle of NYU's campus. On the other hand, since the film can't decide if they "grew up together" or "met freshman year", it seems fair to cut the whole Step Up mytharc at least a tiny measure of slack.
Savani), annoyingly endearing side-character of SU2TS, at his very first day of class at NYU, there to study music, along with his bestest friend in the whole world, Camille (Alyson Stoner) - and if they're such good goddamn friends, maybe we should have seen them hanging out before, given that he was in the second movie and she was in the first.
None of that for Step Up 3D, which takes a look at the relatively sedate Maryland School of the Arts + street kid with a chip on his/her shoulder formula, and concludes, thoughtfully, "No, it is time now to go bugfuck insane". As I recall it, the biggest difference between the two is that the gender of the tough street kid switches from male to female in the sequel. The day is saved, even if you can't quite tell what was at stake. At the school, the kid meets a free-spirited dance student, and together they collaborate on a fusion of classical dance forms and the more urgent, improvised street dancing styles, while falling in love. You may recall - though I blame you if you do not - that Step Up and the immaculately-named Step Up 2 The Streets both told very much the same story, in which a tough kid from the streets of Baltimore ends up in the prestigious Maryland School of the Arts, having demonstrated such undeniable talent at dancing that even the stuffy faculty have to admit the kid's brilliance. And that very tackiness, so inept and flailing, accrues unto itself no small amount of seedy charm. And by God, shit comes at you without abandon in Step Up 3D. We've hit a wall where the only damn good that the current three-year old 3-D fad can do is to throw a bunch of shit at the viewer, the filmmakers hoping to make up in extravagance what they lack in imagination, wit, or skill. Well, for a few months at least, Step Up 3D will be the absolute last word in suffocating cinematic garishness, an idea born of rancid calculation and marinated in the sweat of desperate executives, and I adore it without a whisper of irony - it's the only one of the trilogy gauche enough to be amusing. A gaudy combination of things whose equal can hardly be imagin- oh, I see that they're making a Saw 3D.
Part of me - nor a small part - loves Step Up 3D, for reasons that are entirely transparent: it is a Step Up movie in 3-D. This is such an undeniable fact that the only debate worth having is on the precise modality of its stupidity: is it willfully stupid? criminally stupid? delightfully stupid? extravagantly stupid? Yes, yes, DEFINITELY YES, yes. By every functional yardstick, Step Up 3D is a stupid movie.