BORN TO DANCE

New Zealand, 2015, 96 minutes, Colour.
Tia Maipi, Stan Walker, Kherrington Payne, John Tui.
Directed by Tammy Davis, Chris Graham.

The title is very clear. This is a contribution to the very popular genre of dance films that have followed popular trends on screen since the 1980s. The films have had various titles like Step Up… It is also in the vein of all those competition films, Bring it On, Pitch Perfect….

This is a New Zealand contribution.

It is not particularly startling, as might be expected. However, it has a lot of local enthusiasm.

Tia Maipi portrays Tu, a young man in South Auckland who is part of a hip-hop group. He works in a factory. His mother is dead. His father is military, very demanding, making his son jog every morning, wanting him to join the military as well unless Tu can come up with something else substantial. The son does mention dancing to his father but that is ignored.

Audiences for this kind of film generally do not mind if the screenplay is predictable. Tu does a demonstration tape. It is taken up with interest by a popular Auckland group and he goes to audition, is accepted for training and he has great hopes for ultimate selection. He does not really have a girlfriend at home but is devoted to his group – but on the advice of his friend at work (who then gets arrested and imprisoned for drug dealing), does not tell the group that he is is going to the audition. (Complaints from them later.)

He also meets an American girl from Auckland’s North Shore. She, of course, is the girlfriend of the director of the important hip hop group.

Quite a lot of dancing and turns, especially at the end with the inevitable competition, Tu not accepted by the group, his going back to his own hip-hop company, their training up – and, as with so many similar films, they excel and win. And Dad is there in the audience.

Born to Dance offers exactly what the target audience wants, with the Kiwi accent and atmosphere.