Monday Movie Review: High Strung Free Dance

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Guys. Netflix has been blessing us with all of the bad dance movies and I am here. for. it. I knew Free Dance existed since I’d already discovered the majesty of High Strung, but when I watched High Strung the first time, Free Dance wasn’t streaming yet. So imagine my utter delight when I discovered it on Netflix this weekend. I clicked that shit so fast.

Alright so Free Dance is basically Center Stage, but instead of a fellow dancer, Charlie is a piano player. He’s literally even named Charlie. Barlow (Juliet Doherty) is the main girl, she’s a ballet dancer and she auditions for Zander’s (Thomas Doherty-they don’t appear to be related) new show and gets the part. Zander is a snobby, hard to work with choreographer (he’s the Cooper, if you didn’t pick up on that). Zander and Barlow meet Charlie (Harry Jarvis) when Zander hits him with his car. Barlow then suggests Charlie to Zander when Zander needs a piano player for the job, and our love triangle is complete. Barlow falls for Zander since he’s the hot director, despite the fact that he lies and is just kind of an asshole. When Zander replaces Barlow with a big name star as the lead role in the show, it looks like Charlie might have his chance, but alas, Barlow takes Zander back. When it comes time for opening night, big name star gets hurt (shocker!) and Barlow has to go on for her. She and Charlie end up sharing a moment onstage and presumably they all live happily ever afterish. There are also some random side plots with Barlow’s mom and an old lady that Charlie befriends.

Okay, so I do actually think this movie has a decent storyline (because they ripped it off from Center Stage), but as with High Strung, the dialogue is so bad it’s cringey. I liked the flow of the movie for the most part, but I wanted to see more of Barlow and Charlie and less of their kinda random side relationships with characters who didn’t really need to be there. I will say, the big dance production at the end was cool. Like it was something I would go to a theater and watch. But the final shot of the movie is absolutely baffling. Charlie and Barlow have this moment onstage-a moment Zander has repeatedly instructed Charlie not to do-and rather than closing the movie with the shot of Charlie and Barlow kissing onstage, they kiss, and then show Zander in the wings, watching them with tears of happiness in his eyes. It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Here is one of his performers, deliberately changing the ending of his show, and not only that, kissing his ex-girlfriend in the process, and he’s watching them and crying tears of joy like it’s this beautiful moment. WEIRD.

Across the board I feel like this is a step up from High Strung. I liked the story better, the acting was (slightly) better, and I enjoyed the dancing more (it was more seamlessly worked into the story than in High Strung). It’s still a garbage dance movie, but that’s why I loved it.

Overall Grade: C

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