What I'm about to describe is an actual joke from Dance Flick. An unwed teenage mother named Charity (Essence Atkins) has been having trouble getting her deadbeat boyfriend (Shawn Wayans) to take care of their baby. In one scene, the boyfriend shows up at her door, and says "I'm here to pick up my kid". He walks over to the baby, picks it up, then sets it back down. He then walks out the door, stating that he'll be back next weekend to pick their kid up again. This might be a good time to mention that it took five different people to write this movie.

If that didn't tickle your funny bone, the movie hopes this one will...Our young hero Thomas (Damon Wayans, Jr) is from the "wrong side of the tracks". Dancing is the only thing he knows how to do. In one scene, he's dancing in the middle of the street during a fierce rainstorm. I know this is supposed to be a reference to some dance-related movie, but I can't for the life of me remember which one. Anyway, as he dances, the wind starts to blow harder, threatening to blow him off camera. He's then struck by lightning. Bet you didn't see that one coming. We see him singed with his hair standing up, and then the movie cuts to the next scene. That's the kind of movie Dance Flick is. It goes for the most obvious gag, and then doesn't even bother to go any further than that. The character that's supposed to be a parody of Ray Charles falls down an open manhole while walking down the street. Because he's blind, get it? The fat girl who's supposed to be a parody of the lead character from Hairspray? She...well, she doesn't do anything. She just stands in the background, and looks like the girl from Hairspray.

You watch this movie and wonder to yourself how the humor of the Wayans Brothers was once considered cutting edge. The movie is like being stuck on a sinking ship for 83 minutes. You watch the actors up on the screen, floundering, and you start clutching for anything that can save you from the monotony and the lameness of the jokes. The film itself is mainly a parody of Save the Last Dance, a movie from 2001. If that's not current enough for you, there's not one but two jokes about Halle Berry as Catwoman. I ask again, it took five different minds to come up with this? The loose plot centers on Megan (Shoshana Bush), a white girl from the suburbs. She once had dreams of being a dancer, but then her mother died in a freak car accident involving a gasoline truck, Lindsey Lohan, and Halle Berry. Now she's in an inner city school called Musical High School, and has a chance to live out her dreams again. But first, she has to impress the stereotyped students, and the tough school dance instructors, like Ms. Cameltoe (Amy Sedaris), who doubles as a human beatbox, producing sounds through the same part of her anatomy that inspired her name.

I don't think I've seen a comedy this forced and pathetic since Mike Myers' infamous The Love Guru. The movie tries everything for a laugh, but earns little to none at all. It throws in goofy signs in the background (a sign in the school hall reads, "Don't go to college - it's a waste of time"), musical numbers that stop the movie, and not in a good way (the obese loan shark Sugar Bear, played by David Alan Grier, does a pointless Dreamgirls-inspired number about how much he loves food), and there are a couple High School Musical references that are so vague, you wonder if the filmmakers even bothered to watch the movies. If it weren't for the fact that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are out there making stuff like Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, I would call this the lowest form of mainstream comedy you can find in a cinema. Dance Flick will just have to settle for second lowest.
Even at 83 minutes, Dance Flick seems much longer than it should be. There's not enough material here even for a sketch on the Wayans' old TV program, In Living Color. The genre of parody movies has been on life support for a while now. If this doesn't signal the last dying gasp, nothing will.

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