Directors: Max Giwa, Dania Pasquani

Starring: Charlotte Rampling, Nichola Burley

In cinemas: 21 May

Visually impressive? Check. Minorities speaking in broken English? Check. Plot devoid of originality? Check! No, it’s not Avatar (well it could be, just not on this occasion), it’s Streetdance 3D: the latest film to jump on the street dancing bandwagon (Step Up, Step Up 2: The Streets, Step Up 3) except unlike the others, this is set on the mean streets of London. And by ‘mean streets’, I mean a fancy ballet academy. Streetdance is a gritty, dramatic and realistic social commentary in which two groups of youths from contrasting upbringings must put their differences aside in order to win the most hallowed and prestigious UK Street Dance Final. Serious shit, I know!

The story centres around Carly and her “crew” of dancers wanting to win the aforementioned competition – but in order to practice in a studio in a ballet academy they must allow some of the ballet students to be in her crew. “Madness!” I hear you yell, “That’ll never work!” However, dear reader, it does; the dance routines are nothing short of impressive with the fine dance moves of former Britain’s Got Talent contestants Diversity, Flawless, George Samson and Susan Boyle (well, maybe not that last one).

An interesting element to Streetdance is Real 3D, the same effect used by films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. To be honest, it does absolutely nothing to add to the film and in some scenes, where the camera pans overhead, it causes everything to be compressed horizontally. This for some reason made me think of the 1971 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which can only be a good thing right?

The whole film builds up to the climactic dance final. However, an unknown amount of days before the big night, the ballet dancers are told that their Royal London Ballet auditions are on the same day! This of course causes problems and almost leaves Carly’s crew disqualified for not having all their members present on time. Luckily, Carly’s co-worker Eddie jumps on stage with a boom box (convenient, much?) and surprises everyone by breaking out some ‘ill’ moves. The biggest surprise to me, though, was that Carly didn’t notice her co-worker was George Sampson. C’mon, he was all over the news! Surely he had to take a few days off work for BGT?

In a nutshell: Continuity errors, horrible dialogue and the premise is about original as invading Russia during winter – but that didn’t stop anyone going to see Avatar. Besides, you’ll feel less guilty about knocking one out to the lead female.

David Reilly