This movie offered a very unusual problem for me. As I did some research - looking up other people's reviews so I could plaigariaze them and not work as hard as I needed to - I discovered something odd. On IMDB, "How She Move" is rated at 1.6 and is #11 on the bottom 100. However, on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is rated a 68, which is fresh. That's a huge disparity that tells me something important: whitey is frequenting IMDB a whole bunch.

So the average review on IMDB from Mr. or Mrs. Whitebread filmgoer goes something like: "I am white. I don't understand black culture. I don't like hip hop music. I've never seen a step competition. This movie is bad." Well, I've just got one thing to say in response to that: "I'm white. I don't understand black culture. I don't like hip hop music. I've never seen a step competition. This movie is bad."

Seriously, when I get a DVD in the mail and it has pictures of two dancing, black people on the cover, I think to myself: "Wow, how will these black people interact and tell me a story that will appeal to my white sensibilities?" First of all, many of the characters in this film speak Ghetto. Okay, I don't really know if they're speaking ghetto or not because I don't live in the ghetto and there are no black people within like 100 miles of me, but I just know that I didn't really understand what they were saying. I could have used some subtitles.

I was able to figure this out though: Raya (Rutina Welsey) is forced to return home after the death of her sister to a drug overdose. Raya is an excellent student who went away to prep school, but who now needs to get a scholarship if she hopes to attend college. Of course, in addition to being smart, she's also a good dancer. Frankly, I didn't know there were any black kids that were good students, so I was pleased to be exposed to this information, though it does frighten me that Raya might be taking a scholarship away from a deserving white student.

There's this slight "West Side Story" thing going on here as the first time Raya reunites with tough girl, Michelle (Tre Armstrong), they perform some step moves before bitch-slapping each other. God, I just don't understand black people at all.

Like any dance movie where there's a competition, Raya hooks up with one team, then another, then finally joins Bishop (Dwain Murphy) and wins the day. As a white person with no rhythm whatsoever, I was unmoved by the athleticism and talent of these dancers and was offended and put off by the film's inability to appeal to my white sensibilities. I was also totally blown away to learn that black people fall in love just like white people. Who knew?

"How She Move" is clearly a movie for black people and was offensive to me because there were pretty much no white people in the whole thing and no themes for a white person to enjoy.