Step Up 2: The Streets Is Actually the Best Step Up Movie (And It's on Netflix)

In the opening scene of Step Up 2: The Streets, someone vibrates underneath a subway seat. I’m not sure how else to describe it. He is lying on the floor, and just starts shaking his body until it moves sideways, and then he does it again to move back out. It was, quite possibly, the coolest thing I’d ever seen. However, about ten minutes later Channing Tatum makes a cameo and takes off his shirt in a dance move that might actually just be a magic trick, completely one-upping it.

Step Up was a lovely story about two people from different sides of the track who are united in love and success through dance. And, like any dance movie, the best parts of it are when everyone shuts up and actually dances. Step Up 2: The Streets improves on Step Up in that it largely does away with those pesky details like “love story” and “plot that makes sense.” Conversations and tensions are just breaks to refill your drink or use the bathroom, so you can come back and focus on the dancing, which is truly amazing. It's everything you want in a dance movie: all killer, barely any filler.

Where there is a plot, it’s also mainly one that doesn’t revolve around a love story (though there is one which is easily ignored). Instead, it’s about an underdog group of friends who just want to share their talents with the world. The film takes place at the Maryland School of the Arts, an elite high school where talented teens stop on their way to Juliard. Andie (Briana Evigan) is sent there as a last resort after skipping class to train with her dance crew for the underground dance competition, “The Streets.” Her crew gets mad at her for choosing high school over them (but, like, just move your practices to 4:30pm honestly), and kick her out, after which she forms her own crew of scrappy dancers whose talents aren’t properly appreciated by MSA.

The film also introduces us to Moose, played by Adam Sevani, who honestly should have more of a career. Like, have you ever been so charmed?

As the film progresses and the MSA crew practices for The Streets, there are multiple montages showcasing not just everyone’s amazing dance skills, but the pure fun they have together. They salsa at a backyard party. They throw chopsticks at each other in a restaurant. They pull pranks through the art of dance. And it all leads up to an amazing (if weirdly edited) final dance in the rain where everyone learns it’s not where you came from, it’s what you bring to the table, and let’s all ignore that it’s the fancy dance school kids with loads of privilege and resources who are the ones who win, ok?

I’m going to go out and say most of us do not live the kind of lives where we get to see really amazing dance all the time. Short of actually being in a dance crew, our options are buying theater tickets, watching movies, or happening to be in one of the subway cars where “Showtime!” is going on. And even as someone who grew up on musicals and trips to the ballet with my grandparents, I didn’t fully realize how much I loved dance until I saw Step Up 2.

Step Up 2, like all dance movies, is a fantasy. There is no “real world” where this story exists. It is ridiculous and campy, but the thing is, everyone in this movie is talented. It is clear that most of the cast are not actors first and foremost, but dancers who figured they had to learn to act in order to get steady work. So when they get to stop acting and do what they are extremely good at doing, it feels like a celebration.

Sometimes I wish that movies or dance competitions weren’t the only ways we got to see dance. That there was an entire movie of dance battles that didn’t require a plot to sell tickets. But until that day comes, this is as good as it gets.