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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Great dancing, poor acting

“You Got Served” (Screen Gems) is worth seeing for the one-handed jumping handstands and various other dancing feats of strength, but not for much else. This hip-hop dancing movie abounds with bad acting, random cameos and, yes, good dancing. Two brothers star as best friends in this movie about small-time dancers who struggle to make it big.

Elgin (Marques Houston of IMx) and David (Omari Grandberry from B2K) are two best friends who have an unbeatable crew of street dancers, until they get challenged by a guy in a “Yes, actually the world does revolve around me!” T-shirt. They lose $5,000 in one night and have to make up the money with some small “deliveries” for a nice young man with lots of cash. Elgin loses the bag because David is out on a date with Elgin’s sister. Elgin gets mad and doesn’t want to see David ever again. Their crew breaks up. But, wait, there’s a chance to solve all their problems: with lots and lots of cash. A dance competition for Lil Kim’s next music video has a $60,000 prize! Will they win the money and get to be in Lil Kim’s music video? Will Elgin ever forgive David? Does David really care about Elgin’s sister, or is he just playing her? Well, you can pretty much answer these questions for yourself. I hope you weren’t looking for suspense in this movie.

One of the better things about the movie is, of course, the dancing, particularly the obligatory dancing-in-the-rain scene. My only criticism of the dancing is that there isn’t enough of it. I wish they had slowed down a few scenes to get a better look at how the dance move, because everything is so fast that if you blink, you’ll miss half the routine. Following the age-old tradition of dance films, the final dance scenes contain the best moves. In addition, the soundtrack is surprisingly good. The right music is in the right scenes.

A few really cute and funny moments are thrown in with the unrealistic and poorly acted scenes. And bad acting abounds in “You Got Served.” Even Lil Kim’s acting doesn’t seem realistic, and she plays herself! Omari Grandberry is always smiling, even when he shouldn’t be, but he has a cute smile, so it’s OK. And while I’m not a big Steve Harvey fan, he was definitely the strongest character in this film.

Real tragedies – such as death – just seem like plot casualties in this film. Even the actors’ street slang seems clich?, which can be blamed on the badly written dialogue. Everyone tries really hard to seem cool in this movie, but in the end they just don’t “keep it real.”

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