New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

So what gives Boogaloo the edge? 1. Less smack talk between Turbo & Ozone and their rival crew, The Electro Rocks. Seriously, the first film would be even shorter if all of the PG-rated insult toss off scenes were cut. 2. The songs are better taken as a whole (less bad rap and more spiky R and B and more electro rock - the music, not the film's group.) 3. It is actually closer to a musical than Breakin' is, with several hallucinatory sequences.

There are three showstoppers in particular worth calling attention to (none of which involve anything to do with the telethon antics at the end). Ozone maneuvers a gravity defying-dance around the walls of his apartment. It doesn't have the same "oohwowneatcool" quotient it did for this no longer eight-year-old but it is still impressive. There is a hospital breakin' number (after Ozone winds up there after falling down about a hundred stairs; please don't make me repeat what brought that on) with "nurses" in short skirts, "doctors" doing the worm and a nifty acrobatic move involving a walker. The breakin' de resistance, however is a number involving Ozone and Turbo and a blowup doll, which feels like an homage to Clint Howard in Rock 'n' Roll High School and which is so creepy in retrospect that, not to flog a dead break dancer, would probably only make sense to the non-existent libido of a male child who still looks at girls with suspicions about contracting cooties.

The only question left to be answered is: What is Electric Boogaloo? Oddly enough, the film is no help providing an answer. I will admit to having been only marginally knowledgeable about break dancing back when it was most popular, but considering the simplistic plots of both Breakin' and Breakin' 2, it made sense to me that at some point, it would be announced that the Electric Boogaloo had been "brought" and those who were doubtful would indeed be "served." Alas, this is not the case. The ads for the film are not helpful either. At the end of Breakin', a title card appears to announce, "Coming Soon: Electric Boogaloo - The Dance Sensation of Tomorrow" which seems to me similar to how Dippin' Dots have been heralded as The Ice Cream of the Future for going on two decades now. The trailer for the sequel actually proclaims that "Breakin 2 IS Electric Boogaloo" which probably sounded great in the marketing conference room but only confuses matters.

Long story short, there was a group in the 1970s out of Fresno called the Electric Boogaloos who actually coined the term and created a number of what became legendary styles. Electric Boogaloo is a combination of two distinct "funk styles", boogaloo and popping (a subset of the umbrella term break dancing). Boogaloo uses every part of the body, often employing fluid movements involving rolls of the hips, knees and head. Popping involves snapping the legs back and flexing the muscles continuously to maintain a jerky, stuttered motion.

This concludes your guided tour through a seminal piece of sequel schlock. Feel free to place some cardboard out on your front sidewalk and practice any and all moves that have been discussed.

Next time: It's one of only three films Jack Nicholson has directed to date. Hint: It's a sequel!

Continued:       1       2       3       4