SCREEN

CJ (Short) and his energetic posse win the initial contest, along with the money wagered on it, but CJ opts to go double or nothing. His brother cautions against it, so it's no surprise when he's the one gunned down in the subsequent confrontation. This gets CJ sent off to live with his relatives in Georgia to attend school. He's barely on campus for 10 minutes before it's revealed that unlike most colleges, which revolve around classes and lectures and learning, this school seems to focus primarily on the dance competitions between rival fraternities.

It's a forgone conclusion that CJ will join one of these frats, leading them to victory, but there's an assortment of clichés and cartoon villains to deal with first. CJ falls for the lovely April (Good), whose entrance in any given scene is usually marked by a slow-motion shot of her ass. Not only is she the girlfriend of the biggest jerk in CJ's rival fraternity, she's also the daughter of the dean, who threatens CJ with lines like, "Stay away from my daughter or kiss your education goodbye."

Of course, the hackneyed plot is merely an excuse for the dancing. And there's a lot of dancing. The villains dance to intimidate CJ, CJ dances to show off his skills, the fraternities dance through innumerable training montages, and it all leads to the big competition, where both sides will dance themselves into a tie, which will result in an insufferably long tie-breaker dance. Some of the steps are impressive when the frenzied camera calms down long enough to see them, but the most acrobatic moves are used early on, so the rest of the dance scenes do little more than stop the narrative ... which isn't such a bad thing.