Make It
Happen
(2008/Genius DVD)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C-
The endless fell good films about
novices making it to the top through music and little experience is more than
paper thin, but Darren Grant (Diary Of A
Mad Black Woman, reviewed elsewhere on this site) tries and finds only so
much new to do with Make It Happen (2008)
about a dancer (Mary Elizabeth Winstead of Factory
Girl and Death Proof) who goes
to become a big dancer in Chicago and finds out she cannot succeed until she
finds her inner-self.
Despite a surprise early moment
(her would be slick Hip-Hop dancing is rejected as dishonest and not about
anything) that could have taken the film into character study direction, the
bandwagon party music and cliché-ridden script quickly revert to a tired
formula (from Step Up and Save The Last Dance co-writer Duane
Adler, going to the same well one too many times) that it plays falsely down to
all the bandwagon would-be Soul jams on the soundtrack. Then we get the clichéd ancillary characters
and all I could do was literally yawn.
The result is a tale that makes little happen and is a poor
generations-down carbon copy of the likes of a Flashdance.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X
1 image is on the soft side, with detail issues, one that can be color
challenged and does not always have the best composition. At least the editing was not as obnoxious as
expected. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is
underwhelming, limited by its budget and just not very dynamic in general. Extras include a trailer, blooper reel and
deleted scenes.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
