Breakin' -- 1984, United States. Starring Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, Ben Lokey, Christopher McDonald, Phineas Newborn III, Bruno Falcon, Timothy Solomon, Ana Sánchez, Ice-T. Directed by Joel Silberg. Available on DVD (Amazon).

Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo -- 1984, United States. Starring Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones, Michael "Boogaloo Shrimp" Chambers, Jo De Winter, Susie Coelho, Paulette McWilliams, Ice-T, Harry Caesar, Sabrina García, Peter MacLean. Directed by Sam Firstenberg. Available on DVD (Amazon).

I was always a better skateboarder than I was a breakdancer, and I was a pretty awful skateboarder. Oh sure, I had some moves I could do okay. Acid drops. That thing where you do a handplant and skate up a wall and back down. Kickflips and whatever it's called when you can spin the back of the board around to the front while you're moving. I didn't read enough Thrasher to know all the names. Not bad tricks, mind you, but there was a definite limit to my skills. Any aspirations I nursed about being a good skater were dashed by my continued inability to master the ollie, the basic building block upon which the vast majority of all skating moves are built. Without that most simple of moves under my belt, I was never going to go very far beyond, say, the skills exhibited by Leif Garret in that old Skateboard movie. And while that may be pathetic, it was nothing compared to my potential as a budding breakdancer. Despite the practice, all I really had going or me was the fact that my father owned a floor covering store that afforded me to an ample supply of linoleum squares should I ever need them to facilitate random explosions of headspinning and windmills.

But the fact that I went to middle school from 1983-1986 meant that regardless of my lack of skills, I was going to give it a go anyway. There was a lot about the 1980s I didn't care for even back then when it came around the first time, and there's even more I don't care for as a part of the 1980s nostalgia wave my generation is forcing upon people now that we control programming for some cable television channels. I never liked or identified with a John Hughes film or character from a John Hughes film. I don't advocate violence toward women, or toward anyone for that matter, but I always wanted to slap the self-indulgent pout off of Molly Ringwald's face. I never got into Def Leppard or any hair metal band. Despite these things, there are many other things I'll freely admit to liking no matter how embarrassing they may be. Breakdancing was cool, and it still is, like the He-Man Slime Pit and Stomper Trucks. Hell yes, I owned parachute pants. They were navy blue and gray, and they were cool. On the flip side, tying red bandannas around your ankle and thigh wasn't cool. It was stupid, but I still did it. I never owned a pair of Tretorns, but there was a brief period around 1984 or so when I could be found from time to time wearing a pastel pink Polo shirt with the collar flipped up. I never bought a sparkly Michael Jackson glove out of the vending machine at the roller rink, but I did go to the roller rink. I wasn't half bad at rollerskating, either. Of course, at the time my real focus wasn't so much on backward speed skating as it was on backward speed skating purely to impress Danielle, the young lass who occupied the role of eternal crush for most of my middle school career. I got pretty good at backward speed skating. Never did get to go out with Danielle. So it goes.

I was also an okay dancer for a preteen, something that hasn't really carried over into my adult years. Not that the standards for preteen dance were all that high in rural Kentucky circa the early 1980s. As long as you could outdance Phil Collins, you were on pretty solid turf. And I could do several times better than Phil Collins. I could do the splits and that thing where you hold one leg and jump over it with the other. God help me, but sometimes I feel the urge, some twenty years after the fact, to see if I've "still got it." I don't. I know that very well, and it's not something I have to test to know. I should stick with doing that old man mambo shuffle the guys who play dominoes all day down on the corner do when they're feeling especially wild. And yet the urge remains just below the surface to bust out the old moves, and some day it's going to get the better of me. I only hope that when that day comes, someone is nearby who can stop laughing long enough to dial 911.

Despite my flashy maneuvers, success in breakdancing was like success with Danielle: elusive. Try as I might, no amount of Grandmaster Flash could propel me to a successful windmill or headspin. I could spin on my back and knees, but not for very long, and you can't spin on your knees for your whole life. At some point, you have to do the robot, and you have to be able to do a fluid wave with both your left and right arms. I had the right down pat, but when it came to the left it looked more like a half-assed robot or breakdancing moves as performed by an Etch-a-Sketch drawing.

I tried to better myself. I bought a book about how to breakdance. I think I got it out of the Troll Book Order thing we all used to do. Good stuff, that Troll Book Order. Scholastically sanctioned chances to purchase Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. Unfortunately, the breakdancing book was useless, full of pointers like "To do the headspin, first assume a position standing on your head. Begin to rotate rapidly in a clockwise direction, making sure not to lose your balance." Alfonso's breakdancing video wasn't much better. They were the street dancing equivalent to those "how to draw" books where step one is a bunch of ovals in the shape of a person, and step two is a finished Boris Vallejo painting.

Well, if I couldn't breakdance, I could do the next best thing, which was sit on my ass in the basement and watch breakdancing movies. Granted I kept a pretty tight schedule what with all the barbarian, ninja, and softcore Sylvia Kristel films for which I had to make time, but I was up to the task to also fitting in guys who could pop and lock and had cool names like Jagajoo and Mr. Whippie Legs. Besides, the vast majority of these films all had something in common anyway. They were all part of the universe as envisioned by the beautiful money-grubbing scum of Cannon Films, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Via their Cannon Films company, the dynamic duo of Golan and Globus mercilessly and tastelessly exploited any and every trend that could be exploited, an in fact several that were probably best left unexploited. From ninja movies to an endless parade of Chuck Norris blowing stuff up, Cannon was the film company that made Dino De Laurentiis seem high class. It's fun, at least for me, to imagine that all Cannon films took place in the same world, that while Ozone and Turbo were dancing on one side of Los Angeles, Sho Kosugi was dueling with rival ninjas a few blocks away, and Chuck Norris was at LAX boarding a plane to Laos to search for American POWs still being held by the godless forces of Communism in Southeast Asia.

Needless to say, when breakdancing broke in the 1980s, the boys from Israel were there to wring every sleazy dime out of the trend that they could. But their shameless greed was often our unbridled delight. Golan and Globus may have been exploiters of anything and everything, and their movies may have been cheap, but they were also generally entertaining, especially for a crew of young middle schoolers staying up late to catch them on their friend's satellite TV dish. If trends were going to be exploited, who better than Golan and Globus? At least it wasn't Roger Corman or Charles Band. It seemed at times as if Cannon was plugged directly into the brains of young America. They knew what we wanted to see, and they gave it to us in spades: boobs, bloodshed, and Chuck Norris blowing up a rice paddy.

Breakdancing wasn't flogged nearly as often as other trends, such as ninjas or chuck Norris shooting at Commies and Arabs, but the few films that were made left an impression on audiences that has grown over the years. Well, most of them left an impression. Rappin' has been all but forgotten, and forgetting is an action well-suited to any movie starring Mario Van Peebles. Krush Groove has faired so-so and will probably be helped by its release onto DVD. The three most memorable films to come from the breakdance movie trend were Beat Street, Breakin', and everyone's favorite, Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo. Beat Street was a fairly gritty and almost realistic look at life on the mean streets of New York City, where breakdancing and much of what's recognized as urban culture was born. It was, all things considered, a pretty good film.

The other two films were the polar opposites of Beat Street in terms of tone, but they're just as enjoyable on a different level. They were West Coast fantasy films that bore little resemblance to reality and had as much in common with street and breakdancing as they did with the feel-good technicolor musicals of previous decades. They had a pre-tough guy image Ice T in sequin-covered shoulderpads and a derby. The movies were corny, naive, and not in the least bit in touch with the grim reality of poverty and urban decay as witnessed in Beat Street. They were neon and glitz to Beat Street's concrete and tragedy. Breakin' was West Coast, yo, and Beat Street was decidedly East. They were escapism, and sometimes that's what people want.

Our urban adventure begins in Breakin', where we meet guys whose real street names (Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp) are cooler tan their movie street names (Ozone and Turbo). Ozone and Turbo are the baddest street dancers on the boardwalk, and that's all there is to that. Some chumps from an outfit called Electro-Rock always try to start some nonsense, but Ozone is too honorable to come down to their seedy level. The third hero in our trio is Kelly, or Special K as she becomes known, played by Lucinda Dickey, who would go on to more notorious fame when she starred in another Cannon oddity, Ninja III: The Domination. As far as I was concerned, Lucinda Dickey was just about the most beautiful woman in film during the 1980s. I know many would disagree with me, but that's because they are crazy. Lucinda looked like someone's really hot older sister, and when your in middle school you can't ask for much better than a friend with a really hot older sister. You could keep your Cheryl Teagues and your Molly Ringwald and whoever else was considered to be the bombshell of the time. Christie Brinkley, I guess. For my money, you could do no better than the adorable Lucinda Dickey with her short-cropped dark hair and alluring array of slinky Danskin outfits. In fact, the only woman who could really give her a run for her money was Beat Street's own Rae Dawn Chong. When I was eleven, I was pretty sure I was going to marry one, if not both, of these women.

Breakin's plot is nothing new, and it's little more than a very thin skeleton upon which to hang a bunch of song and dance numbers. It's basically Flashdancewith cooler dancing and people, and the story is one that's been used countless times since then: the classically trained student who is in a rut until she/he infuses their discipline with fresh, cutting edge moves from the street. All problems can be solved if you simply incorporate more hip hop into them. I try to remember this when I'm cooking or doing math. Julia Stiles used it for that Save the Last Dance movie, and now there's something about a guy who gives a wild hip hop edge to the school marching band. An edgy hip hop movie about the marching band? I know that playing in the marching band is hard work. I lived in the dorms with a guy who was in the University of Florida marching band, and that's the big time as far as marching bands are concerned. They were up before dawn and had a physical workout more intense than any of the ROTC guys. It was an all day thing, and yeah, it was pretty hardcore. You had to endure the physical demands and still be able to bust out a rousing rendition of "Louie Louie" during Gator Growl. But that doesn't mean I want to watch a movie, however hip hop edgy, about the marching band and more than the member of a marching band wants to watch me incorporate hip hop moves into my use of Photoshop. As far as I'm concerned, that ranks up there with the Kirk Cameron movie about the pressures and glory of a high school debate team taking the state finals, where the debate team performed in gymnasiums full of screaming fans and cheerleaders.

Despite the similarity in basic stories, there are quite a few things that set Breakin' apart from Flashdance. For one, Lucinda Dickey was a real dancer and, unlike Jennifer Beals, performed all her own moves. She was even on Solid Gold for a while. Myself, I was primarily a Dance Fever man because of that slick Denny Terrio, but once I saw Lucinda Dickey shaking it for all it was worth, I was willing to endure any amount of hosting by Rex Smith, Rick Dees, or Marilyn McCoo.

Breakin' also understands that most of the people who want to watch dancing are other dancers. That's not a slight on the art form of dancing, which is impressive up to the point where hirsute hippies tumble around in abstract interpretations of "The Rage of a House Cat" while grating new age music blares in the background. Certain types of dances are meant for certain audiences, and your fellow dancers are always the ones who will understand you. I always wondered how those grizzled steel mill workers in Flashdance felt when they went down to the nudie bar after a hard day's work and ended up watching a fully clothed woman perform modern dance routines. Did they appreciate the art? The passion? Or were they just pissed about the lack of titties? Breakin' gets that people like to watch breakdancing, but cheering crowds of factory workers will not rally around jazz or tap performances.

Breakin' splits its time between the trials and tribulations of Kelly and those of Turbo and Ozone. Kelly is forced to part company with her lascivious dance teacher when he puts the moves on her, and I'm not talking about Riverdance moves. Thus, she's left without a troupe for the big competition. Ozone and Turbo, meanwhile, are challenged at every turn by the evil breakdancers of Electro-Rock who menace the boardwalk by getting in people's faces and performing aggressive pop 'n' lock routines. Okay, they learned the moves from Darrin's Dance Grooves, but did they miss the message??? With great pop and lock power comes great responsibility.

Kelly meets Ozone and Turbo through a mutual friend in tight purple leotards. In Ozone and Turbo, she finds true friendship and guys who can teach her the moves that will help her get back at her snotty ex-teacher. In Kelly, Ozone and Turbo see her ability to add the one thing that their street performances are missing: a really hot chick. Along the way, they will have to battle the narrow-minded attitudes of the dance community establishment, tear down the barriers between people, and show us that art, love, and gay choreography can conquer all.

While the plot may lift an idea or two from Flashdance, Breakin' has far more in common with something nearly as popular in urban populations as breakdancing: kungfu films. Think about it. Lucinda Dickey's character is cast out of her school after she discovers the well-respected master is actually dishonorable and corrupt. In an effort to avenge her honor and expose the sham master, she seeks the wisdom of two roguish outcast masters who can teach her the secret style that will help her on her quest. These two masters have challenges of their own tof ace, of course, which they are able to rise above with the help of their new student.

A stretch? Perhaps, but remember that the greatest martial arts star who ever lived (Bruce Lee) was also the cha-cha king of Hong Kong. Breakdancing draws a lot from martial arts moves. And perhaps most convincing of all, the first street dancing scene on the boardwalk features a young Jean-Claude Van Damme in the crowd, wearing a revealing black unitard, clapping his hands and smiling like a goofball. By all accounts, Van Damme's flexibility and aptitude at the splits comes less from his proficiency with martial arts and more from his proficiency as a dancer. Of course, judging by what you see on screen during this scene, Van Damme's dancing credentials seem to be as dubious as his martial arts credentials.

So it's Flashdance for the breakdancers. It's a kungfu movie in a dance movie's clothing. What else will we discover as we peel away the layers of the onion that is Breakin'? Well, we discover that it's also a utopian fantasy film that offers a vision of the future far more appealing than any of those Blade Runner dystopias or any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the utopian society requires everyone to wear burlap smocks and be really into harvesting crops while repeating the mantra, "It's a good life, captain, and we're a simple people." Everyone in Breakin' is happy and clad in an array of colorful duds. The villains prefer to limit their evil to acts of evil boogalooin', and conflicts are settled through dancing. Everyone lives together with no hint of racial strife. Black, White, Hispanic, and even that Belgian guy all get along. Tough street dancers with banana-shaped earrings get along just fine with gay modern dance guys in package-revealing lavender leotards. In the world of Breakin', all that matters is the art, and the art can overcome anything.

Compare that to Beat Street's far grittier vision of urban street life where people stab each other and die. In Breakin', the weather is always perfect, and the sun always shines. In Beat Street, it always seem overcast, gray, and chilly. Granted this was partly because the makers of Beat Street had to film through a bleak New York winter for a summer release date, while Breakin' enjoyed the balmy year-round warmth of southern California. Breakin' is all dayglo pants, mesh tanktops, and spritefully colored neon leotards hugging Lucinda Dickey's perfect curves. Beat Street is all denim and leather and dingy winter jackets. Boogaloo Shrimp wears sparkling surplus marching band coats, while Ramon in Beat Street just owns one of those dull olive drab surplus army jackets. Beat Street features hardcore raps from Grandmaster Flash about fighting The Man and dying in the gutter, while Breakin', other than a few "party people" raps from Ice-T, features music that skirts dangerously close to disco. I don't Know if Ice T was responsible for his own material, but if he was, he should be held as accountable for that as Pantera should be for that pretty boy glam metal album they made and pretend not to know anything about. Oh sure, you act all tough now, but I've seen you in your lipstick and spandex making pouty Molly Ringwald lips at the camera, just like I've seen Ice T in a shiny derby looking like Judy Garland meets Rollerball.

The end result was that Beat Street, while being the better and more ambitious film, was also a box office dud. Breakin' was a huge hit, and it's following has grown as its status as one of the great cult films of the 1980s has worked wonders for its enduring popularity. And that's not a bad thing, because despite what you might think, this isn't a bad movie. Indeed, Beat Street doesn't get the respect it deserves, but the respect paid to Breakin' isn't undeserved. Does it look dated? Sure, but what's wrong with that? It was a snapshot of a particular time and crazy culture. Why shouldn't it look dated? What Breakin' lacks in realism it more than makes up for with enthusiasm from all sides. No one in the cast was very experienced with acting. Lucinda, Shabba-Doo, and Boogaloo Shrimp were all dancers with minimal exposure to acting, and each one of them manages to overcome their limitations through the use of ample energy and charm. The supporting cast is there mostly to smile and dance, or snarl and dance, or just be gay and dance. There's really nothing wrong with any of the performances, and besides, the real star of the movie is the dancing.

And there's plenty of dancing to be had. Jazz dancing, breakdancing, combinations of forms, and even some odes to classics like Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Witness, as an example, Boogaloo Shrimp's late-night boogaloo with a broom. Astaire all the way, complete with Shabbo-doo making a reference to Astaire. The breaking on display is primarily West Coast in nature, which makes sense seeing as the movie is set in Los Angeles. Like different styles of kungfu, East and West coast breaking had a few notable differences. East coast style was defined by aggressive, almost fight-like moves and acrobatics. Head spins, windmills, things like that were primarily products of the East Coast.

The West, on the other hand, favored boogaloos, robot moves, and things like that. Less aggressive, more fluid, but just as impressive. East Coast was wushu, and West Coast was tai chi. Naturally, each style used elements from the other, and it all came from a few sources. The coolest seeds from which the breakdancing plant sprung were James Brown with his electric slide and Michael Jackson back before his face fell off and he still had an afro. Jackson introduced a dance called The Robot, which was quickly co-opted by, of all things, New York street mimes. Believe it or not, the mimes are where much of modern breakdancing originated. Groups of kids in New York would see these mimes performing these robotic moves, and before too long they were incorporating them into dance. I know it doesn't sound as street tough to trace breakdancing back to mimes, but what can you do? I mean, mimes have to be good for something after all. The influence of martial arts and gymnastics soon gave birth tot he more flamboyant moves in breakdancing, and the next thing you know, we're all wearing parachute pants and listening to "Rockit" by Herbie Hancock.

See, you never thought I'd be a wealth of historical breakdancing information, did you? Let that be a lesson to you. I'm full of unexpected shit. Don't try to figure me out, baby. I'm a labyrinth, and if you wander in too deep, you'll never find your way out of my leafy green corridors. Maybe some day, if you're lucky, I'll tell you some stuff about Aaron Burr or Funkadelic.

Breakin' is fun. It's goofy, but it's fun. It has a certain charm to it. After all, how often these days do kids get "role models" in the movies, or movies that push a positive message? Movies like Breakin' and The Last Dragon may seem silly in retrospect, but you'd be surprised to know that they were actually somewhat effective in influencing kids to stop being such pricks. As corny as they may sometimes seem, kids really did respond to positive role models. At least some did, which is better than none. You know me. I watched porno and gore films at an early age, and I still do it from time to time. Well, not porno, because that would be wrong. Those films are in my library purely for research purposes. So anyway, I'm not one of those media watchdog types who thinks everything should be wholesome and kind. At the same time, I'm not an idiot, and I think marketing things like Grand Theft Auto and sexually explicit songs and movies to youngsters is despicable. And it's no fun, to boot. Kids should have to work for their porno. When I was young, we had to make do with glamor photography books or hide Penthouse inside Dragon magazine. I don't think Hollywood is the place for people to find role models, but int he absense of parents who give the slightest damn about the responsibility of being a parent, children will turn to all they have left, and most of that comes from film and television. So no, Hollywood doesn't have to provide kids with positive role models, but they should want to anyway. We sure could use a Shabba-Doo or Bruce Leroy or a Grandmaster Flash now.

Sorry to go all old man on you folks, but the youth of America are a real tragedy, and while we can shake our heads at them and their shocking lack of intelligence and responsibility, the blame ultimately swings back around to us. My generation has proven to be a rotten bunch of parents who demand the right of parenthood while refusing to accept the responsibility. If "the kids" are stupid, it's because we made them that way. We let them grow up dumb and undisciplined. If they can't turn to their parents, if their community leaders are doing crack with a hooker in a sleazy motel, then where do they turn? Pop idols. And look at the pop idols we give them. The elder generation always sits around in their rocking chairs on the front porch and complains about how the younger generation is going to destroy us. If that happens, then my generation will have created its own Frankenstein's monster. This may seem an unevenly heavy trip to lay at the feet of everyone in the midst of a Breakin' review, but the fact of the matter is that I really feel sorry for kids today. They are given the choice of idiotic drivel or hateful rage, and no one is there to teach them about reality and responsibility. They don't even have simple, harmless fun like Breakin'.

Breakin' was directed by Joel Silberg, who up until this point had worked primarily as a director on movies over in Israel. He'd go on to direct two more Cannon Films stabs at exploiting the dance world -- 1990's Lambada: The Forbidden Dance and the aforementioned forgettable Rappin'. Shabba-Doo and Boogaloo Shrimp made decent careers for themselves via guest appearances. Shabba-Doo even parlayed his success in these films into a career as a dancer with someone very nearly as adept as Golan and Globus at exploiting street trends for her own monetary gain: Madonna. Shabba-doo also had a part in Lambada, but had nothing to do with another attempt by Cannon to cash in on a dance craze, 1988's Salsa. Lucinda went on to do a couple more films before retiring and getting married to some guy who went on to become a producer for the show Survivor.

Before any of that, however, the end credits of Breakin' promise us there's more crazy dance action on the way in a sequel. They must have foreseen the success of Breakin', because less than a year later, Golan and Globus returned with a new offering that would become one of the most recognizable titles in film history: Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo.

This time out, they tapped Cannon Films workhorse director Sam Firstenberg, the man who directed such films as Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III: The Domination, the first two American Ninja films, and some of the Delta Force movies, among others. The trio of stars that carried the first film return for the sequel, which is set a few months after the triumphant close of part one. Ozone and Turbo are teaching down at the local community center, while Kelly is on the road to getting a major part in a dance production based in Paris. When the forces of greed conspire to tear the community center down to make room for a new shopping center, Kelly, Ozone, and Turbo unite to fight The Man the best way they know how: by getting everyone to dance, dance, dance!

Electric Boogaloo is notable different from the first in a few key areas. First of all, it concentrates more on character development, at least to a degree. We get to meet Kelly's rich parents, who naturally disapprove of her hanging out with riff raff who wear plastic overcoats and Civil War caps. Will Kelly give up a career in Paris to help her friends fight the good fight? We also meet Ozone's vindictive ex girlfriend with big hair, who has it in for Kelly. And Turbo falls in love with a dangerously cute Hispanic chick who can't speak a word of English but does understand the international languages of romance and dancing. Rodance, I guess you'd call it. Plus, there's the whole community center plot, which is a complete throwback to the 1970s when every community center in the inner city was going to be torn down by the Mafia or city council unless the neighborhood's dancers/singers/roller skaters/karate students banded together to stop it. Nothing original, of course, and they're still using that plot to this day, but once again the energy and charisma of the cast more experienced with dancing than acting elevates the mundane plot and makes it all a lot of fun.

This time around, the feel of old musicals is even more evident, as entire neighborhoods join together in song and, in one scene, the singing and dancing of our young heroes in a hospital heals the invalid and even brings a dead man back to life as sexy nurses in miniskirts shake what their mamas gave them. The power of friendship and dancing can stop bulldozers, save the children, and make grumpy old white men donate thousands of dollars to the cause before breaking out into lame "old white guy" dance moves. Boogaloo Shrimp once again has the standout scene when he does one of those "dancing on the ceiling" bits in a rotating room that, I have to admit, looks really cool. It was done later and with fewer impressive backspins and windmills by Lionel Ritchie. There's also a great scene that proves my kungfu movie theory when Ozone, Turbo, Kelly, and the kids from the Miracles Community Center (incidentally, they use the "We need a miracle" line one time too many) face off against the evil breakdancers (who, of course, join the heroes in the struggle at the very end) in a combination of kungfu moves and breaking that I guess was known as combat dancing. At least, that's what they called it in that Rooftops movie. Yeah, y'all thought I forgot about that one, didn't you?

Our three leads acquit themselves well. While the spoken acting is uneven from time to time, the acting they do with their bodies is consistently top notch. And all things considered, the spoken acting isn't that bad. Lucinda Dickey looks just as cute and charming this time around as she did last time. Ozone has to play the "You don't understand the streets, and you don't understand me" card a couple times to many, but it's balanced out by Boogaloo Shrimp's performance as the impish street dancer who is discovering that his love for a cute Latina lass may be just as important to him as the dancing. There's a scene that is equal parts hilarious and disturbing when Ozone tries to teach Turbo the finer points of romancing a woman, which culminates in them fighting over a life-sized stuff female doll (we're better off not wondering why they owned that) which Turbo pretends is the Hispanic girl and Ozone pretends is Kelly. After they tear it to shreds, they laugh a hearty manly laugh and simply dance together before coming to their senses and doing that, "Get away from me, you homo!" double-take.

The added complexity of Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo could have torpedoed the movie. This is, after all, the type of movie that should be kept simple. Luckily, it works out well, and Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo stands up just as well as the original, if not a little bit better thanks to the title. Part two's attempt to inject more social issues into the movie brings it closer to the more socially and politically charged films like Beat Street or, say, Monkey Hustle, which shares the same basic plot but features Yaphet Kotto running around in a suit all The Sting style while Rudy Ray Moore wears a chest-revealing gold jumpsuit and yells "Kick they aiy-ess!" But even more than the many other movies with the same plot, Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo paints a multi-cultural picture where anything -- race, class, gender -- can be overcome by friendship and an impressive boogaloo. Naive, yes, but since we're in the middle of "cynical overload" here in the early 21st Century, I can't help but appreciate the innocence of the sentiment. Sometimes I have to wonder why these city council types always try to tear down these run-down but big-hearted community centers. Don't they know their metropolitan machinations are going to result in an ass whuppin' from Ozone, Rudy Ray Moore, and Black Belt Jones?

All things considered, as a white kid from a rural town, I should have identified more with Footloose, but I always thought that movie was stupid, especially the part where all the religious kids who had never danced in their lives were able to bust out the wild moves all of a sudden. Yeah, I can accept Turbo dancing across the ceiling and making a broom float, and I can accept the notion that breakdancing and love can change the world, but my suspension of disbelief cannot be extended to buying Chris Penn as a slick man on the dance floor. Plus, lets face it, Lucinda Dickey was much cuter, and Turbo and Ozone were much cooler. With the Breakin' movies, it didn't matter what color you were. Everyone was welcome to wear awful clothes and have a good time.

I'm not really sure how these films play to people who didn't experience them the first time around. They were big deals ac in the day, and that certainly colors my opinion of them. I can embrace them without having to save face by saying, "they're so cheesy they're cool" or any of those other post-modern condescending things that people regurgitate to make themselves feel better about liking something that might be the slightest bit silly. You folks know me. I like the movies because I like them; not because they're so bad they're good or because of any sense of irony. Breakin' and Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo are simply feel-good, fun-loving musicals with a charismatic cast, fabulous dancing, decent music, and a positive message about believing in yourself, believing in your dreams, accepting others, and the joys of dancing up the walls of your pad in order to impress cute Hispanic girls. It's a shame too many people are too self-conscious to simply cut loose and enjoy themselves. Breakin' and Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo offer something, like The Last Dragon, that kids don't get very much of these days: good, clean, innocent fun.

And a guy named Boogaloo Shrimp.

Labels: B-Masters Roundtable, Musicals, Studio: Cannon, Year: 1984