I grew up in a town of 500 people. That is important to keep in mind while I tell this story. A town of 500 people in rural Illinois. No black people. When I was in junior high, my next door neighbors went through a serious breakdancing phase, and they recruited me to be on their gang? Team? Troupe? (what do you call a group of breakdancers? Let's go with "gang" because that sounds coolest) even though I couldn't break dance. I could do exactly one move -- that worm thing where you lay on your stomach and kind of flop your body forwards from feet to head like a centipede having a full body convulsion. Except I couldn't go forwards, only backwards. We called ourselves the Pop Lockers, without a hint of irony. We made matching t-shirts by painting on white undershirts, and even tried to recreate the look of urban graffiti as only a bunch of white rural kids who've never even seen a black person can.
Even in a town of only 500 people, we managed to find a rival break dance gang (maybe the Sharks? Though I might just be confusing my memories of childhood with "West Side Story"). We were always threatening to have a break dance rumble, but it never materialized.
I didn't see "Breakin'" when I was a kid. I only just now saw it for the first time on TCM. But in retrospect I'm guessing my neighbors did, and another piece of that whole puzzle has now fallen into place.
This is not the kind of movie you review. This is the kind of movie you watch if you want to enjoy a corny, pretty bad movie, or you don't watch if you don't. My rating of it is based on how entertained I was during it, not how good a movie I thought it was.
This is also the kind of movie you watch if you want to get a brief glimpse of Jean Claude Van Damme (yes, that Jean Claude Van Damme) dancing in the background of one scene while wearing a black unitard. And let's be honest, who doesn't want to see that?
Grade: B.
Even in a town of only 500 people, we managed to find a rival break dance gang (maybe the Sharks? Though I might just be confusing my memories of childhood with "West Side Story"). We were always threatening to have a break dance rumble, but it never materialized.
I didn't see "Breakin'" when I was a kid. I only just now saw it for the first time on TCM. But in retrospect I'm guessing my neighbors did, and another piece of that whole puzzle has now fallen into place.
This is not the kind of movie you review. This is the kind of movie you watch if you want to enjoy a corny, pretty bad movie, or you don't watch if you don't. My rating of it is based on how entertained I was during it, not how good a movie I thought it was.
This is also the kind of movie you watch if you want to get a brief glimpse of Jean Claude Van Damme (yes, that Jean Claude Van Damme) dancing in the background of one scene while wearing a black unitard. And let's be honest, who doesn't want to see that?
Grade: B.