FREAK DANCE (2010): UCBeat Street

Made in 2010 but just hitting DVD now, Freak Dance may be a little bit late to the game with its skewering of the battle-dancing genre, especially since there's already been one goofy parody (the Wayans family's surprisingly decent Dance Flick).  But this film, written and directed by Upright Citizens Brigade co-founder Matt Besser and starring many staple actors of that theater in Los Angeles, still manages to find something fresh to savage.  Rather than take the anything-for-a-joke route of the Wayanses, Besser and crew apply a more subtle, straightfaced approach that embraces the outright silliness of the genre.  With the goofy factor toned down just a little, Freak Dance could have passed for an actual dance flick.

It has the obligatory plot line of any dance movie, borrowed from Footloose, Dirty Dancing, The Forbidden Dance, and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo equally.  When their community center is threatened with closing due to health violations, the dance crew Fantaseez and their leader Asteroid (Hal Rudnick) are left with no choice but to battle-dance in a local underground competition and use the prize money to pay their fees.  Their crew consists of the talented but cocky Funkybunch (Michael Daniel Cassady), the functioning illiterate Sassy (Angela Trimbur), the dorky Egghead (Benjamin Simeon), the aptly named Silent Girl (Peipei Yuan), and their newest recruit, the rich-girl-with-street-cred Cocolonia (Megan Heyn).

Though the many jabs at dance movie conventions grow tired pretty quickly, the movie works largely because the dancing is, well, not bad.  Rather than just goof on the genre, Besser and his co-director Neil Mahoney take the choreography seriously enough that the musical numbers are clever and often hilarious.  Though the cast is mostly made up of improv actors, they prove themselves (or in some cases, their doubles) to be pretty adept at movement.  An early scene in which the Fantaseez crew invades a hospital and infects the entire staff with dancing is laugh-out-loud funny, and the big battle climax against a rival crew led by a strip club owner (Drew Droege) is uproariously vulgar.  The song score, written by Cassady and Brian Fountain, is not tightly composed but is consistently clever and serves a series of charming numbers. (My favorite: the code violation list-song "The Bathroom's Too Dark to Pee.")

The four original Upright Citizens (Besser, Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, and Ian Roberts) are very funny in small roles, and there are guest appearances by several UCB Theater regulars, including Horatio Sanz, Casey Wilson, Tim Meadows, and Andrew Daly (who has the film's funniest one-liner).

Humor-wise, Freak Dance comes with few surprises; those familiar with Besser's work and with the Del Close-style improv of the UCB Theater (including the terrific sketch show from the late '90s) will know what to expect.  What I was not expecting was for the dancing to be this good.  Freak Dance is funny because it was made by funny people, but what elevates it is that the dance numbers are cleverly conceived and professionally choreographed.

*** out of ****