Roxio CinemaNow - How She Move

The Canadian film How She Move, the critics seem to agree, has all the clichés of similar dance movies. But Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune comments that screenwriter Annmarie Morais "has a way of making the clichés seem new. ... Mainly it's a very solid dance picture." Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times has a similar reaction. "There's nary a twist you don't see coming," he writes, "but the film's strong acting, spectacular dance routines and culturally specific details turn cliches into catharsis. It's the sort of film that sends you home with a spring in your step." Ty Burr in the Boston Globe asks, "How many times can you watch the same movie with different actors and a new title? If it's a dance musical and the dancing's good, the answer's obvious: As many times as they can keep cranking 'em out. No one went to see Astaire-Rogers movies for the plots, and no kid is going to go to How She Move for its hackneyed inspirational story line about an inner-city good girl who wants to step bad. When the cast starts clomping atop a car, their synchronized bodies joining with the booming cross-rhythms, we're sold." Nevertheless, several critics point out numerous shortcomings (beginning with that ungrammatical title for a film about high-schoolers competing for a college scholarship.) Rafer Guzmán in Newsday begins his review this way: "Somewhere between the acrobatic dance sequences and lead-footed script of How She Move there exist fleeting glimpses of a serious film that could have been."