Third dimensional dancers and zombies

Step Up 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife

3-D films are nothing new, having been in existence since the 1950s. They re-entered mainstream cinema in 2003 with Ghosts of the Abyss by James Cameron after going through the phases of “the golden era” between 1952 and 1955, “revival” between 1960 and 1984 and “rebirth of 3-D” between 1985 and 2003. Now there is even a 3D television, so people can watch their favorite diaper commercials and almost feel the smoothness of the baby’s bottom. Nevertheless, movie-goers still get revved up when a new 3D film comes out. The question that comes to mind is; is it just the 3-D factors that they are excited about or do they really care about the film itself?

Apart from being a cheapskate, I never saw films in 3-D because I did not want to be distracted from the stories, the acting and everything in between. But I decided to take a chance at looking silly with the red and blue glasses to see what the fuss is all about so I went a little crazy and saw two 3-D films, Step Up 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife. Besides, zombies in 3-D? Who could resist?

Even with new extraordinary dancers joining the cast of Step Up 3D, the story line was quite predictable; boy sees girl, boy gets girl, they win the competition with their friends. Cliché? Very. Here the boy is Luke (Rick Malambri) and the girl is Natalie (Sharni Vinson) and they are joined by Moose and Camille (Adam Sevani and Alyson Stoner) from the previous Step Up films.

The movie starts with a documentary style filming, where members of Luke’s dance crew, House of Pirates talk about what dancing means to them and their lives. In my opinion, that is what the movie should be – a dance documentary with these great dancers telling their life stories. That would be more interesting and real, saving us from the predictable plot and cheesy acting. Yes, the acting was so cheesy you would want to have a slice of pizza afterwards. It is forgiven, however, considering that these actors are dancers first, and great dancers at that. It was the amazing string of dance sequences that kept me glued to my seat, not the story.

The 3-D effects did not help with scoring points either. I had expected to “dodge” from dancers coming out of the screen but all that was served to me were floating bubbles and wiggling fingers. It was fun and cute, I giggled every now and then, but I was not impressed by the effects.

My disappointment with the story and acting was consoled by the dance routines, with more dancers, some from the So You Think You Can Dance television show, joining Malambri, Vinson, Sevani and Stoner. Twins Martin Lombard and Facundo Lombard, Chadd Smith, Daniel “Cloud” Campos and Harry Shum Jr., among others, did things that I did not think were even humanly possible. They twisted their bodies in ways they are not supposed to, slammed their bodies onto the floor hard enough to cause lung collapse and jumped high enough to have qualified them into the Olympics.

Kudos to the choreographers, but the writers could have worked a little harder for a fresher plot.

Moving on to Resident Evil: Afterlife, the 3-D zombies did successfully make me flinch and squirm. Based on Capcom’s video game series, Resident Evil, this is the fourth installment of film adaptations. Plot-wise, I was quite confused as I have not been an avid Resident Evil follower but the “stopping the villain from sucking the life out of every remaining human being in order to become immortal” was pretty clear cut.

The acting: stiff. But unlike Step Up 3D, this is a zombie movie so the stiffness worked well and for the non-zombie characters, they were either scared out of their skins or macho zombie killers so stiff fits, too. I liked Alice’s (Milla Jovovich) fighting scenes which reminds me of Trinity from the Matrix Trilogy. The fact that a woman was the best zombie butt kicker was very intriguing. With her were Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) and Crystal (Kacey Barnfield). I particularly liked the fighting scene between Alice and Claire, and a giant zombie creature in the showers room, although my friends and I did not quite establish what the creature actually was.

The zombies looked realistic. Not that I have seen a zombie before, but the make-up artists did a good job at making them look believable. I enjoyed the 3-D experience with this film; the effects were, well, effective. Audiences could see the effort put into this by the 3-D artists compared to Step Up 3D‘s, which disappointed me especially as my first 3-D film. The winning point for Step Up 3D, for me, is that a person does not necessarily have to watch the first two films to understand the third installment, whereby for Resident Evil: Afterlife, he or she would be quite clueless without seeing the previous three films first.

Although Resident Evil: Afterlife was not of my preferred genre, I did not regret having paid 17 ringgit to experience the whole 3-D fuss. At the end of that film, the audience predicts that there will be more installments to come. I think as long as the heroine is alive, the Resident Evil films will never end, because how do you fully eliminate zombies from all over the earth? That will be for the writers to think of, and for us to just sit back and wait.