Battlefield America (2012)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The dance sequences were enjoyable, but the story is a bit cliché and lazy. It has that "Teacher/Student" bond that we've seen before in other films which helped the kids be successful in the end.The acting isn't half bad, but the editing felt rushed only to get to the good parts rather than trying to dive in more on the character's lives. This seems like a more ghetto, dramatic, kid version of "You Got Served." Not a bad movie, but needs to be better.

It was cute... I mean Chris stokes in my opinion is a terrible writer, and Marques Houston we all know isn't the smartest tool in the shed... I don't mean to be so harsh on them for I grew up loving sister sister and immature, and I have a guilty pleasure for you got served and even as cliché and poorly written that movie was it became one of my favorites Chris stokes is a decent directer/producer but I beg that he let somebody else write for him, and I hope it is no one that is a part of his R&B discovery squad with the exception for maybe Brandy. The plot was unoriginal. It was the Mighty Ducks with dancing. The dialogue was terrible. The actors were high and low some were over the top and some just weren't trying hard enough. With that said the talent of the kid dancers made this movie go from 2 stars to 4 stars. They killed it, and made it worth the watch. I decided to add one more star for good production.

Dance movies, I've seen them all, from Step Up saga to the German Body Language to Streetdance.Director Chris Stokes gives this dance phenomenon a twist by including young kids as the main dancers in this movie with a plot more than obvious by the mile. A young working man with hunger for success and a complete lack of care for the rest is sentenced to community service helping a group of kids to participate in what is called "Battlefield America", a dancing competition.This is obvious plot for any dance movie these days and we know by now nobody makes original dance movies anymore, it's all about "wininng a contest with the trophies at the end", but, we can always forget that,if the "road to get there" is good enough and the characters are good enough... not so with this movie.Character development and interaction is just plain horrible. I understand that kids maybe are not masters in acting but adults are horrible too, this usually means bad choices in casting and a bad director.. the whole of acting in this movie is quite horrible to be honest, it feels forced, rushed and not connected. There is not a single scene in this movie that feels authentic and I can almost "feel" the scripts lines being play in the background, the actors reading their lines and the cameras all over the place, it just feels so artificial that it actually seems like a rehearsal to the movie.It's infuriating because it feels plastic and this further develops from bad to worse when we see kids in costumes, fighting each other like gangs to show who has the higher ego in town, it feels so misplaced and unnatural.The very few dance scenes further helps sinking this movie with exception of the ending scene which is, quite good, even when it's short. The dialog is basically silly and pointless and helps perpetuate this disaster. About 1 hour into the movie you will pray god to finish it already but it keeps going and going..The cliché list is interminable, from the future girlfriend helping the moron coach to be a good coach, to the back and forth of the main coach, the kids attitude of hatred for the moronic coach at the beginning to loving the guy at the end, the rivals (always bad persons, not just people competing, they are the devil), the obvious win at the ending... I could go on and on and it will be a waste of words.The movie is not worth it, doesn't help bring anything new to the table and the result is a mixed disaster of bad script, horrible acting and full on Hollywood clichés.It is quite evident that the director put a lot of effort to gain money of out this instead of putting some heart into it, this or the lack of technical skills to make a decent movie.It doesn't even deserve a 3. Go re-watch Step Up or StreetDance.

You really do have to wonder where certain filmmakers' heads are at when they conceive of a movie. "Battlefield America" is the most preposterous, exploitive, cloying, artificial film of its kind since "Standing Ovation." Written and directed by Chris Stokes, it's essentially of the junior division of his own "You Got Served," which is to say that it tells the story of competing dance crews made up almost entirely of children. Not only is this grossly implausible, it's also incredibly disturbing; by replacing adult dancers with kids in the ten-to-twelve age range, Stokes has created a spectacle no less bizarre and fetishistic than a child beauty pageant. That most of them are boys instructed by male dancers only makes it even more unsettling, especially since a select few of the crew members are effeminate and dressed androgynously.All leads to the dance competition the film takes its title from, which is held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. During the finale, we're made aware that some of the screaming audience members are the dancers' parents. This begs the question: Where were these parents when their kids were performing in one of the film's several music-video like dance sequences, all of which take place in secluded back alleys and abandoned basketball courts and are presided over by shady thug stereotypes? One also wonders if there are enough preteens in the city of Los Angeles that could believably dance in a street crew, or even comprise the sum total of the huddled spectators cheering them on. For everything Stokes tried to achieve, one of the most basic should have been an idea that was at the very least plausible.When the film isn't objectifying its child stars in dance routines that get increasingly difficult to tell apart, it forces us to endure a plot so manufactured and sickly sweet that it could easily be printed on the back of a Mrs. Butterworth's bottle. We meet Sean Lewis (Marques Houston), a successful advertising executive who's on the verge of being made one of the partners. The night he celebrates his promotion is the same night he gets pulled over and arrested for a DUI. His attorney is able to pull a few strings and get a jail sentence reduced to community service. And so he reports to a local community center, where the director, the lovely Ms. Parker (Lynn Whitfield), gives him the option of being a mentor to a group of boys who are the laughing stock of the street dancing scene. Sean wants nothing to do with them. He hates children. And initially, the feeling is mutual.Already, you can see the wheels turning. The film will not only be about the freeing and redemptive power of dance, it will also be a buddy story, where Sean learns to open his heart and not be so materialistic. He becomes especially close with a boy named Eric Smith (Tristen M. Carter), whose sass talking masks hurt over a drug-addicted mother and a father who abandoned him. As all this is being established, Stokes works in a puppy-love romance between Eric and Ms. Parker's niece, Chantel (Chandler Kinney), who speaks softly, smiles beautifully, and delivers flowery dialogue that would have been better suited for a second-tier greeting card. And, of course, Sean and Ms. Parker will inevitably fall in love. All of this happens only because that's what convention requires. Absolutely nothing happens organically.Meanwhile, Sean, who is admittedly not a dancer, takes it upon himself to train Eric and his friends for numerous dance auditions, which then leads to the Battlefield America competition. They're repeatedly confronted in public places by a rival dance crew led by Hank "The Shockwave" Adams (Christopher Michael Jones). It's one thing to have influence over a group of adults, but when you knowingly brainwash a group of boys into being bullies, you have officially crossed into dangerous territory. Shockwave and his crew are the current reigning champions of Battlefield America, which should already tell you everything you need to know about how the movie ends.I take that back. Stokes also works in scenes with Sean's stuffy boss, a hardened prosecution attorney, a mom who refuses to let her son dance at the competition, and the sudden reappearance of Eric's father. To say that the finale wraps everything up a neat little package would be a massive understatement. Never have I witnessed a more miraculous turnaround, especially with such a large group of characters. It's bad enough that there is not one iota of truth in "Battlefield America"; to turn child actors into hapless victims of the plot is just plain inexcusable. Stokes objectifies them, I suspect more to satisfy his own personal filmmaking desires than for the sake of entertaining the audience. This is a shamefully phony movie – one of the year's worst.-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)