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(About Our Ads) "HOW SHE MOVE" (2008) (Rutina Wesley, Dwain Murphy) (PG-13) If you've come from our parental review of this film and wish to return to it, simply click on your browser's BACK button. Otherwise, use the following link to read our complete Parental Review of this film. QUICK TAKE: Drama: Following her sister's drug-related death, a young woman returns home from prep school, then joins a competitive dance troupe in order to earn prize money and be able to go back to school. PLOT: Raya (RUTINA WESLEY) is a hardworking student at prep school when she learns her sister has died of a drug overdose. Raya returns home to Toronto, where she must deal with her grieving mother, Faye (MELANIE NICHOLLS-KING), and resentful peers, such as Michelle (TRE ARMSTRONG), while preparing to pass an exam that will let her return to school and so, as she sees it, escape her underclass environment, especially the dealers with whom her sister spent time. A series of events leads to Raya's decision to join a dance crew -- and not the women's crew that featured her sister, but a men's troupe, because they win larger contest prize monies. Though mixed crews are rare in high-level competitions, Bishop (DWAIN MURPHY) accepts Raya because she is a great, energetic dancer, and also because he has a crush on her. Following more trials and tribulations -- including an argument over a contest that breaks up the crew temporarily -- the dancers make their way to the big finals in Detroit, emceed by Keyshia Cole and Deray Davis (as themselves). Here, Raya confronts her own anger and frustration over her sister's death, apologizes to her mother for lying about several events (in order to spare her mother more pain), and the team pulls together to perform a spectacular number. OUR TAKE: 6 out of 10 Raya (Rutina Wesley) wants to get out of the ghetto. More specifically, she's planning on med school (Johns Hopkins, because she knows how good she is), in order to leave behind Toronto's tough Jane-Finch corridor. But even as she's making A's in prep school, she finds herself called home when her sister dies of a drug overdose. This entire plot unfolds in the first two minutes of "How She Move." As Raya ponders her future, suddenly so different from what she had intended, she's caught up in a swirl of emotions. Grieving and frustrated, she's also used to being the "good girl" and determined to help her financially strapped West Indian parents, Faye (Melanie Nicholls-King) and David (Conrad Coates). To that end, she puts up her usual solid front: "I've got it under control," she asserts more than once. Because Faye's distracted, she doesn't notice that, in fact, Raya is in all kinds of trouble of her own, not least being the tensions she's feeling back at public school. There, her sister's friends, feeling their own unarticulated guilt, as well as resentment at Raya for leaving, taunt and abuse her. When a math teacher pushes Raya to show off what she's learned at the fancy school, her classmate Michelle (Tre Armstrong) ends up humiliated and infuriated. Payback is sure to come. Michelle knew Raya's sister, and still hangs out with the same gang, drinking and smoking dope (Raya advises Michelle to quit with this bumper-sticker line: "You start making people like this a habit, then you're the habit"). Michelle holds herself together by remaining committed to her dance crew, a plot point that opens up the movie to its primary metaphor: dance as life. Per formula, the film also includes a romantic rivalry, as Michelle feels possessive of a dancer named Bishop (Dwain Murphy), who is in turn interested in Raya. Tensions mount, Michelle and Raya come to actual blows, and their principal decides to solve the problem by assigning Raya to peer tutor Michelle, who is (predictably) failing out of school. Even as this arrangement sets up for some serious girl bonding, Raya is briefly detoured by her desire to get back into prep school. After a scholarship exam goes badly, she determines that her only ticket is dance contest prize money. In fact, it turns out that Raya -- like her sister before her -- is a fierce and creative dancer, though Bishop is reluctant to invite her onto his team, as mixed gender crews don't win contests. (Not to mention, his boys -- including E.C. [Kevin Duhaney] and Trey [Shawn Desman] -- resist dancing with a girl.) At this point, the film drops its melodramatic pretense to become the sort of nonsensical but mostly entertaining musical that Fred Astaire used to make: a series of energetic dance numbers with bits of rudimentary exposition in between. To its credit, and unlike the better financed, U.S.-made hip-hop dance movies ("You Got Served," "Stomp the Yard," and even, in its awkward way, "Honey"), the grainy 16mm "How She Move" stars some serious dancers. In order to make her own transformation (or recovery) remotely credible, Raya puts in long hours of rehearsing, adopting some sensational moves designed by Bishop's underappreciated, argyle sweater wearing younger brother Quake (Brennan Gademans plays the character, the film's actual choreography is by Hi Hat). That's all to convince Bishop at last that her contributions will help the crew at the national finals in Detroit, "Step Monster" (emceed by Keyshia Cole and DeRay Davis, playing strikingly uncharismatic versions of themselves). En route to the big showdown, Raya must also come to terms with her sister's bad choices and death, as well as her own deceptions. Lying to Faye and David about what she's doing (her mother disapproves of dancing most vehemently, as she associates it with her older daughter's drug use), Raya keeps telling herself she's doing it to get out, to be the success her mother needs her to be. The few scenes that showcase Raya's relationship with her mother reveal tensions that are at once delicate and deep. Such complexity is offered mostly in Wesley and Nicholls-King's work together, as they overcome a script that has Faye warning, "Young people always think they can have everything, but life has a way of teaching you different!" Right. Except when you're in a dance contest movie, in which case, life does no such thing. "How She Move" rates as a 6 out of 10. (C Fuchs) Reviewed January 17, 2008 / Posted January 25, 2008