Movie Details
| Title: | Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo | |
| Director: | Sam Firstenberg | |
| Year: | 1984 | |
| Genre: | Healing Power of Dance | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.08.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.08.06 | Alamo Downtown | For the second show (with a much rowdier crowd), Alamo Tim got up to introduce and gave a rowsing speech about what impact these films have had on his life. I think I was born just a bit too late to have any sort of permanent damage from 80s movies (aside from a little demented childhood nostalgia) but definitely remember these movies coming out and jamming out to them and thinking they were so cool and dancing with my neighbor friend who lived down the street and acting all bad-ass because we wore dogchains for a week. So then there was another dance competition (won by a woman who did a pretty wicked heartbeat move) that AMODA William coerced Tim into participating in. Tim got out of his chair, took a huge swig of beer, and said OK. All I can say about Tim's popping and locking skills is that... he looks like an absolute psychopath while he gets his groove on. Just in his face, it looks like he's trying to kill children while ha moves and contorted. I immediately damned myself for not having my camera right there in close-up because it would've made bar-none the best DVD extra of all time. So... curse me, and curse Oblivion. Anyway, for whatever reason I thought the second Breakin' was the better of the two. Yeah, I was about as wrong as I could be. It's like when Dave Chappelle talks about going out of town for a summer and returning to DC after crack cocaine had hit the streets. It's the same town I guess, but it's like a flipside bizarro-world nightmarish version of the same town. Electric Boogaloo is like the cracked-out el negativo version of the first movie. It's all pastel colors and huge sweeping music numbers where everyone on Earth knows how to breakdance (including the mailman and telephone maintenance guy). not to mention the gang fights in the form of dancing. In the first one it made sense because the better dancer won the club cred and showed up the other dancers (see You Got Served) but alone under some highway one gang breakdancing against another? There also seemed to be a huge influx of bondage gear between early 1984 and late 1984. Gone are the jazz dance buttcrack tights and spandex leotards, but now everyone seems to be sporting something spiked, studded, or handcuffed. Everything is supposed to be so much happier and shinier in this one but all the costumes and emotions and characters have a much darker edge to them, much more aggressive. It's a really weird mixture of tones that didn't sit well with me at all. Luckily though, the healing power of dance won everyone over and it ended happily. There was another short Q&A afterward where Boogaloo stressted that the healing power of dance is what brought blacks and latinos together in the movie so maybe it could work in LA right now. who knows... all I know is that the 80s were a strange time and these two films stand as constant reminders of just how strange it was. Lest we ever forget... |
