Stomp the Yard has one great thing about it. That thing, its best thing, its only thing, its cool thing, is its sense of rhythmic percussion. If you ever saw the novelty musical Stomp or have heard Alan Lomax's collection of Parchman Farm chain gang songs from the '40s, you'll get down with it.
Its script must have read: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM!
It's really two movies. The first and most forgettable is the much-told old story about a young man finding himself and becoming somebody.
The young man is an L.A. street dancer named DJ, well played by charisma merchant Columbus Short.
When, at an underground dance contest heavy on intimidation and aggression, he and his brother trump some gang-related dancers, trouble breaks out, the brother (Chris Brown) is killed, and DJ is arrested. It's juvey or, through connections, off to college. How big a no-brainer is that?
| At college -- Truth University, in the film a historically black institution in Atlanta -- his talents get him noticed even as he's noticing a beautiful young woman, April (Meagan Good, whom you will go home and dream about after seeing this film, just my prediction). He finally decides to commit to a team sport and, as an athlete, finds the respect, the brotherhood, the emotional completion that has been denied him by circumstance and pathology. He leads the team to the nationals.
If you've never seen stepping, it's quite a show, and the film throws well-deserved light on this somewhat under-the-radar phenomenon, at least outside African American fraternities. There is no I in close-order drill -- or in stepping. (It helped -- this was my downfall in the Army -- if you knew your left foot from your right.)
) is nevertheless equally riveting. It's charismatic movement, like samurai sword fighting, or deep pass catching; you marvel that anyone could get so much grace and power out of his body.
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