The Movie Movie franchise, that most lucrative conveyer belt of ill-conceived comic spoofs, is a minefield for the discerning consumer. In the red corner, we find the Wayans Brothers, purveyors of such mindless, belly laugh courting enterprises as Scary Movies 1 and 2; over yonder, we spy David Zucker (Scary Movie 3 and 4) and the assorted studio apparatchiks behind Date Movie, Epic Movie and – heaven help us – Superhero Movie.
It hardly matters that this unlovely sub-genre has little to offer beyond the ‘comedy’ of recognition; this loose affiliation of products - one would hesitate to call them films - has raked in enough to fund several Large Hadron Colliders.
Dance Flick, an unstable concoction of references culled from well-loved hoofers – Save The Last Dance, Footloose, High School Musical, the gang’s all here – is, at least, a Wayans joint. The New York brothers behind White Chicks and Little Man may not be the subtlest practitioners of the comic arts. But they do, at least, attempt to link their pop culture targets and jokes thematically.
Let’s not get overly excited. Any movie featuring Zac Efron ersatz singing “Gay!” to the theme from Fame is broad in ways that can only be expressed in geological terms. But there’s a comfort in Dance Flick’s obviousness, an unpretentious, completely infantile comfort.