Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984)

I desperately want to love a movie called Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.  That title just speaks to me.  Unfortunately, it is a title that you’ll remember long after the movie has left your brain.  It is not very good.  It has a lot of electricity in it, and a lot of boogaloo.  But the two don’t really come together.  There is a lot of boogaloo here but not what anyone would call an Electric Boogaloo.  Am I being picky?  Well, that’s ma’job.

Breakin’ was such a surprise hit in May of 1984 that the people at The Cannon Group rushed a sequel into production that came out in December.  And, believe me, you can tell it was rushed into production.  If the first movie had style and energy, this one seems out of breath.  The producers clearly want to get onboard with a sequel before either the first movie is forgotten or the breakdance craze dries up.

The movie is so rushed that the producer’s excuse for a story here is right out of an old Mickey and Judy picture from the 1930 – some mean old developers want to run their bulldozer over the local community rec center and the kids gather together to put on a show to save it.

That’s all kind of in the background.  Most of the movie is made up of a universe in which dance is a part of everyday life.  There’s a cop in the film’s opening who is issue a ticket who immediately breaks into dance and soon the whole neighborhood is dancing.  Everybody dances in this movie.  There’s a dance sequence on the ceiling recalling Fred Astaire and there’s a weird dance sequence in a hospital that looks like a Saturday Night Live bit.  The problem is that much of the footage feels like it was excised from the first movie, outtakes that are grafted onto this one to make it feature length.  It’s a Frankenstein of a movie that hobbles and wobbles and occasionally does The Worm.