| WORST RATED
MOVIE ON IMDB:
You Got Served
Written and directed by Chris Stokes
Your film has to be very bad to crack the bottom 100 on the
IMDB. With democratic voting enabled, even some of the cheesiest and cheapest
and most childish and most artless films can find supporters to give their
guilty pleasures a curve in the rating scale. You have to accumulate at
least 625 votes to even placed in the ranking so there might actually
be worse films out there which either haven’t been adequately viewed
or haven’t left enough impression on those who frequent online movie
sites.
You Got Served opened at #1 at the box office early this year
but quickly dropped in ticket sales thereafter. Now it (temporarily?)
ranks #1 on IMDB’s bottom 100 with an average rating of 1.4 (out
of 10). It is doubtful that the picture has no fans. There are likely
many who enjoyed it. Those people must not own a computer. Actually if
they liked You Got Served they probably aren’t smart enough
to use one.
Omari
Grandberry (of the group B2K) and Marques Houston (of the group IMX) star
as David and Elgin, leaders of a champion street dance crew. Street dancing
is little more than mixing in old school break moves with the unimaginative
routines seen in modern boy band videos. At times these dance crews resemble
the elaborate cheer squads of Bring It On. The plot resembles
that film, too, as it features an opposition between rich Orange County
kids and those from poor South Central culminating in a big televised
competition. Elgin’s younger sister (Jennifer Freeman) even falls
for his friend and teammate David.
Aside
from the cookie cut story, stiff acting and porn-caliber dialogue, writer/director
Chris Stokes, who is also manager of boy bands B2K and IMX, fails to direct
with courtesy to his audience. It is pure insult that in the end when
he hones in on an unfamiliar character (played by Jackee and credited
on IMDB as “mama”) that must obviously have been cut out of
the narrative, she carries no significance whatsoever. His attention is
too often focused on the mundane exposition and colorless conversations
involving tedious rivalries and broken friendships. When the film actually
features the talented dancers, there is so much coverage and cutting of
the choreography that the routines are in complete disarray. Aside from
a few moments of spotlighted breakdancing, the camera never stays put
enough to get a clear image of what the performers are doing. It was bad
enough when 20 years ago Ginger Rogers said about dance films of the 1980s,
``the young people today--they think they can dance with their faces!''
Today she might say that young people no longer dance, they just bedazzle.
Does
You Got Served deserve its placing as IMDB’s current worst
film? There have been plenty of worse movies and will surely be worse
in the future. It isn’t likely to remain at the bottom. It is like
the music on its soundtrack, exemplary of the fickle minds of modern youth,
forgotten tomorrow and succeeded by something new. You Got Served
is so negligible that it is indeed deserving of that.
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