Burn the Floor

Talk about a producer's dream: take an ensemble cast (with nary a star or standout in the bunch), spin them around the stage floor to a series of popular old tunes (small or no royalties), and charge people an arm, a leg, and a left gonad to watch and voila! you've got Burn the Floor, a Riverdance wannabe that lacks its predecessor's focus and charisma. Far from achieving the Evening Standard's breathless blurb of "Strictly Ballroom gone strictly sexy," this narrative-less journey through dance takes roughly 10 minutes to set-up and then mechanically lurches from one set piece to another in a roughly chronological order that is, nevertheless, utterly serendipitous in its selections (the centerpiece, a flamenco involving an apparently testosterone-heavy standoff between a couple of guys and a woman with a hairdo meant to represent a bull, is both silly and overly long). Plus, I don't know about you, but I am seriously tired of seeing the fractured-time effect used smartly and with a purpose in The Matrix now appearing in every other TV commercial and here to no purpose whatsoever. Considering director David Mallet's smart work on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (see VL Online), this is something of a disappointment, though I must say the source material--97 minutes worth of repetitive twirling couples--doesn't offer a whole lot with which to work. Not recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)