Breakin' 2 - Electric
Boogaloo
Director: Sam Firstenberg
Year: 1984
Rating: 5.0
This only goes to show you can't
keep a bad thing down. Cannon returns with a sequel to the first Breakin'
less than a year later. The world sighed with relief. Break Dancing wasn't
dead yet. I didn't really want to come here but the completist in me gave
me a kick in the pants - along with Ninja 3: The Domination it was a Lucinda
Dickey trilogy for 1984 which was basically her entire career. None of them
good films and yet a sign of the times. Break dancing and kung fu. Breakin'
must have done ok at the box office because this clearly has a bigger budget,
more music and more dancing. Enough in fact to keep you mildly entertained
like a good lobotomy. None of the songs really stand out - they needed a
Fame but got 'I Believe in the Beat". They do try for a couple Fame like
street scenes full of people but have little of the joy of that song.
After the first one, Lucinda went off to
become a professional dancer but only in the chorus and when the show closes,
she returns to her two buddies and dance partners, Ozone and Turbo. The villains
in this are pretty standard. White snobs including her parents and white
real estate developers. All stereotyped racist assholes. There is a large
community center where the kids come to practice their moves and learn some
new steps. But damn, those real estate baddies want to tear it down and put
up a shopping center. And the local govt thinks that is a great idea. So,
they fall back on an idea as old as the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland teen films
- let's put on a show to save the Center! Yay. Not that these kids have a
lick of the talent as those two did but it is festive and fun. Guess who
wins. These two films are as innocent and clean as snowflakes on the
first day of winter. When two gangs clash and come together, I was ready
to yell "rumble!" and they get real close and then start . . . dancing.
Not exactly West Side Story but in the neighborhood.
