60.4%
Based on 41 Reviews
Movie Info
Released:
January 25, 2008
Runtime:
1hr 31min
Director:
Ian Iqbal Rashid
Writer:
Annmarie Morais
Cast:
Rutina Wesley, Dwain Murphy, Tracey Armstrong, Cle Bennett, Romina D'Ugo
Rating:
PG-13 for some drug content, suggestive material and language.
Plot:
Following her sister's death from drug addiction, a high school student is forced to leave her private school to return to her old, crime-filled neighborhood where she re-kindles an unlikely passion for the competitive world of step dancing.
87.5% Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
How She Move proves you can't judge a film by its plot line, even if it sounds suspiciously similar to a few other movies about stomping the yard and dreaming your dream and dancing like you mean it.
86.0% E! Online Dezhda Mountz
Director Ian Iqbal Rashid overrides cliché to tell a riveting story backed by a thumping soundtrack.
80.0% Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Karen Martin
The worst thing about How She Move is its dopey title. Practically everything else about this energetic Canadian dance drama is just right.
80.0% Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The specificity of Caribbean-Canadian life in a low-income, multiethnic Toronto neighborhood gives How She Move, a pleasantly conventional story of striving and step dancing, its flavor.
75.0% Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
The energy level is high and the moral-that you can aspire to escape the old neighborhood without abandoning all that's good in it-is one we hear too seldom.
75.0% Denver Post Lisa Kennedy
Thankfully, director Rashid appreciates the finesse and power barely contained in the moves choreographed by Hihat.
75.0% Miami Herald Donald Munro
Rutina Wesley, who plays the lead character in this low-budget Canadian urban dance drama, has the energy of exploding popcorn.
75.0% Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Mack Bates
How She Move is a solid addition to the dance genre's dance card.
75.0% Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Jane Vranish
How She Move doesn't do itself any favors with a title that betrays the intelligence behind this surprisingly engaging movie.
75.0% San Francisco Chronicle David Wiegand
The good things about How She Move are the dancing, the music and the cast. And the best things about it are the very good cast members dancing to the pile-driving rhythms of the dance music.
75.0% Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Colin Covert
All in all, a satisfying combination of drama and dance.
75.0% Toronto Star Susan Walker
How She Move stands out as a well-written and well-acted drama with an appeal that reaches beyond dance fanatics.
68.0% Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach
How She Move is one tinderbox of a movie. Predictable, yes. But definitely smokin'.
68.0% Boston Herald Tenley Woodman
Its somber tone borders on being too earnest for its own good, but still manages to stay level from beginning to finish.
68.0% Philadelphia Inquirer Gary Thompson
Most of the energy lost through a leaky narrative, however, pours back in the dance sequences.
68.0% Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
How She Move is the latest urban music drama from MTV Films, and it manages to give a familiar story a vivid jolt of character.
68.0% St. Louis Post-Dispatch Kevin C. Johnson
Though the movie's story is only average and overly well-intentioned, the high-energy dancing and fresh-faced, attractive cast help make How She Move more of a right step than wrong.
68.0% St. Petersburg Times Steve Persall
How She Move contains the usual underdog elements, yet director Ian Iqbal Rashid lays out obviousness with persuasive grit.
62.5% Boston Globe Ty Burr
How She Move is a grittier, slightly more real-world version of movies like Step Up, Stomp the Yard, and Save the Last Dance.
62.5% Hollywood.com Betsy Bozdech
Thanks to earnest performances and flat-out amazing dancing, the fairly predictable inner-city drama of How She Move feels surprisingly fresh.
62.5% Kansas City Star Jason Heck
A fairly conventional tale told with surprising urgency, How She Move crackles with energy despite a screenplay overly reliant on clichés.
62.5% New York Post Kyle Smith
I realize it's asking too much to expect a movie about competing for an academic scholarship to contain more than 30 seconds of studying. But couldn't we at least have a grammatical title?
62.5% Seattle Times Moira Macdonald
Whether it's step-dancing, ballet or anything in between, dance-competition movies are pretty much all the same; it's just the dances that change.
62.5% Slant Magazine Nick Schager
Less shiny and polished as Stomp the Yard, Ian Iqbal Rashid's film nonetheless remains a similarly contrived saga.
62.5% St. Paul Pioneer Press
There's a reason it's called How She Move. Whenever the characters speak, the movie's lousy. But when they dance? Outstanding.
62.5% TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
The percussive, aggressive rhythms of stepping come through vividly, laced with touches of sly humor and assertive sexiness.
62.5% USA Today Claudia Puig
Though the story is predictable, How She Move has two key assets: powerful dance sequences and an emphasis on education.
62.0% Las Vegas Review-Journal Carol Cling
How She Move makes some obvious sacrifices that will satisfy audiences anxious for more dancing -- but guaranteed to frustrate (and disappoint) those of us intrigued by the characters and their conflicts.
60.0% Canoe.ca Liz Braun
How She Move is a film with its fair share of flaws, but you probably won't remember any of them thanks to the movie's gobsmacking dance sequences.
56.0% A.V. Club Nathan Rabin
To borrow the reductive mathematics of pitch meetings, it's essentially Save The Last Dance meets Rize meets Canada.
50.0% Commercial Appeal (Memphis) John Beifuss
The unattractive low-budget photography denies viewers the pure sensual pleasure afforded by the great dance films.
50.0% New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
How She Move gets it right in every dance sequence, but stumbles badly whenever the characters step offstage.
50.0% Providence Journal Michael Janusonis
The script is something we’ve seen a dozen times before.
40.0% Arizona Republic Randy Cordova
You expect a film about dancing that features a hip-hop score to have a sense of rhythm and style to it. Guess again. How She Move, quite simply, doesn't move.
40.0% Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
It's a laughably overfamiliar melodrama about stepping, the aggressive, confrontational street dancing that evolved from break dancing, crunking and the like.
37.5% Salt Lake Tribune David Burger
How She Move is a carbon copy of the countless dance movies, like Stomp the Yard, that have infiltrated theaters in recent years.
30.0% IGN Todd Gilchrist
How She Move is one of two dance movies due in theaters in the coming weeks, and let's hope it's the worse of the two.
30.0% Metromix Chicago Matt Pais
A healthy serving of killer dancing would make this semi-watchable, but How She Move is badly shot and boringly choreographed.
25.0% Newsday Rafer Guzman
Somewhere between the acrobatic dance sequences and lead-footed script of How She Move there exist fleeting glimpses of a serious film that could have been.
20.0% Indianapolis Star Joe Shearer
Sigh. Where to start with How She Move? The grammatically incorrect title is the least of this film's offenses.
20.0% Fort Worth Star-Telegram Cary Darling
The one good thing is that, as tedious as How She Move is, the next step-dance epic -- Step Up 2 the Streets, opening Valentine's Day -- has to be an improvement. Right?
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