Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo

I, like many, have often used the subtitle for this movie as an easy, albeit obvious, gag, often when coming up with ridiculous sequel ideas. But despite the fact I had been referencing this movie for years, I had never coughed up the dough to actually see what it was all about. Thankfully, a friend of mine (who was sick to death of me making said jokes) purchased the DVD and now my life is somewhat more complete.

Keep in mind I haven’t even seen the original Breakin’, though something tells me that doesn’t matter. Oh sure, the original cast is back and they make references to the first film, but honestly, the story is not at all important. Heck, it barely registers in my mind! All you need to know is Kelly has returned to her quaint home town after appearing in a long Broadway run of A Chrous Line. Her rich, and thus inevitably conservative, parents don’t want her falling back in with the break dancing crowd, demanding she get married to a weasel they picked out for her in advance. But, as Kelly so deeply explains, she doesn’t want their life. She wants her own! You go, day-glo headband girl!

Dismissing her parents’ wishes with a huff, Kelly runs to the open arms of her two best friends, Ozone and Turbo. Oh, you heard that right. And she wonders why her parents don’t like this crowd! Oddly enough, Kelly doesn’t have a nickname of her own, leading me to think there aren’t any at all in this group. So are Ozone and Turbo their real names? Let’s not dwell on that too long.

Kelly soon learns that Ozone and Turbo are spending their time teaching dance lessons at the local community center, a horridly colorful building called Miracles. Seriously, this place looks like something out of a Crayloa nightmare. Prompted by someone telling Kelly about Miracles via rap, the group heads downtown to check it out, dancing and electric boogalooin’ the whole way. At Miracles we meet many cooky characters, including precocious break dancing kids and a grizzled but warm-hearted old man who runs everything. Of course, with such a friendly, warm atmosphere, something has to go wrong, right? And what do you usually have in a movie with this lazy of a script? That’s right, a mean old white businessman!

Mr. Douglas (doesn’t that name just scream white?) plans to tear down Miracles and replace it with, of all things, a shopping center. Can you believe this man? Why, he’s diobolical! The only way the kids can keep their community center is if they raise the $200,000 needed to repair the building. $200,000? Is the place about to burst into red flames at any second? It just sounds a little much is all…

Okay, so you can guess the rest of the plot for yourself, I’m sure. But for those of you on the edges of your seats, let’s just say that Kelly’s parents realize how judgmental they’ve been and write a check that caps off the group’s fundraising efforts. Their efforts, by the way, include car washes, potted plant sales, and a gigantic show they put on outside Miracles which looks like it would need a budget of about, oh, $200,000 to complete. Seriously, where are they getting the money for the show? We see them build a huge stage, and there are balloons, streamers, and a heck of a lot more, so wouldn’t they have to subtract expenses from their final total? Maybe I’m thinking about this too much.

Despite the fact that the kids keep warning Mr. Douglas about how they’re going to do something to save Miracles, much of the film is just break dancing, break dancing, and more break dancing. The gang visits a happenin’ club and dances to a female pop trio. The gang goes up against an “evil” dance troupe for a battle royale. Our main man Turbo dances on the ceiling and walls of his pseudo-house while practicing the suave moves he plans to use on a non-English speaking Latina. Yeah, the sub plots are about 15-200 in number, and after a while you kind of forget the whole community center thing.

In one sequence, Ozone tries to teach Turbo how to dance with his Latina crush by demonstrating with a life-size ’80s doll. And when I say this thing is ’80s, I’m not joking. It looks like something out of a bizarre Madonna toy catalog. As Ozone dances, Turbo begins to replace the doll with an image of his real-life girl, so he grabs the doll in a fit of jealousy and dances with it himself. But then Ozone imagines Kelly in the doll’s place, so he gets jealous, and so on and so forth. Hilarity…ensues. It’s kind of disturbing to see how easily these guys can use their imaginations to transform a doll into any female they choose, leading one to wonder what they do with it at night. Yeesh…

But what movie is complete without an appearance by Ice T? Oh yeah, the Ice Man himself is in this movie, acting as the M.C. at the big show the gang puts on at the end of the film. He’s skinny as all get out, too, looking like he’s barely into his ’20s. His cameo was the one true laugh out loud moment in the entire movie, so if you wanna see him talk about Miracles and fundraising in a free form rap, I highly suggest getting this DVD.

Speaking of the DVD, are there any extras, you may ask? There is one bonus feature, namely the original trailer for the film. It sells the film well, choosing to ignore the inane story and focus on the hot moves the kids of the time were into. At the end I had to laugh, though, because the narrator of the trailer actually says something like, “Another hit from Golan and Globus films!” Hoo boy, talk about an ironic statement. If only those two knew how far-reaching their film would be! Well, the subtitle, at least.

Breakin’ 2 is definitely easy to digest, even if the many montages tend to get old after a while. At some point I wanted the South Park team to jump in and sing The Montage Song, for crying out loud. But it’s cheesy fun, so I’m not going to rag on it too hard. Oh, there was one gross-out moment, though. During the finale, the camera cuts to a member of the crowd, a girl who raises her arms in celebration to reveal…copious amounts of pit hair! Gah! My eyes! It’s such a quick shot I would say it’s subliminal. Trust me, you don’t want to be caught unprepared.