Street Dance 2

The 2010 release of StreetDance 3D, a British take on the contemporary American dance flick, couldn’t have been any more perfectly timed if it had been choreographed by Bob Fosse. Urban dance had just gone mainstream thanks to Britain’s Got Talent, and 3D cinema was riding high on the success of James Cameron’s Avatar. As a result, the film was an enormous hit, boosted by the fact that it was also a bona fide hoot. Two years on and the dancing is as hot and hip as it ever was, even if the timing isn’t quite so propitious. While London thrums with Olympic anticipation, the StreetDance tournament has decamped to Paris, where the first film’s Eddie (George Sampson) is joined by fresh hoofers angling for first place. Newcomers range from the sublime Sofia Boutella to the ridiculous Tom Conti, as a club owner whose accent suggests a childhood split between Borat’s Kazakhstan and the café in ’Allo ’Allo. A new emphasis on Latin dance means the choreography is often stomach-flutteringly seductive, but it’s hard not to regret the loss of the first film’s uniquely British flavour. The script, plot and acting are all dance-movie standard, which is to say they’re hideous.