If Greek life at Northwestern has taught us anything, it’s that fraternities and sororities don’t serve a higher purpose. They’re social networks that take all the fun out of making friends. So when Stomp the Yard connects fraternity life at an all-black college to the civil rights movement, it’s moving but ultimately naive. There’s no pumping social significance into the step dancing competitions between two rival frats that occupy the movie’s central story.
Yet “Pump” director Sylvain White tries to, and despite some ham-fisted lessons about “brotherhood” (read: self-validation), his deep sincerity becomes one of the film’s major assets. Upcoming actor-dancer Columbus Short matches White’s seriousness with a quietly earnest performance. DJ (Short) moves from a crime-ridden L.A. to Truth University in Georgia, where his street dancing skills get him into trouble with the fraternity step teams but also make him an asset to their annual finals tournament. DJ falls for the girlfriend of the school’s best stepper, April (Meagan Good), and joins the opposing frat’s team.
“Was that to save my honor?” April asks DJ after one particularly showy dance battle against her boyfriend. But of course. Stomp the Yard reiterates tired movie ideas about romantic rituals and masculine head-butting. There’s a more honest sequence in the beginning of the film, when DJ and his brother win a dance battle in an L.A. club full of the city’s more unsavory characters. They ride on the adrenaline of their gravity-defying moves only to be brought down by gang violence. On the sweaty, dirty dance floor, battling offers hope and companionship for DJ’s team members just as much as it brings them closer to the dangerous reality of inner city life.
White recognizes the social struggle of DJ’s transformation to college life. If L.A. is his painful but honest past, Truth University is his path to catharsis. Except White just can’t transcend the banality of his college romance plot, despite the surprisingly tender relationship DJ forges with April and his tough-loving uncle and aunt who brought him to Georgia. White directs several explosive dancing sequences, allowing DJ’s stoic frustration expression in his incredible aerial stunts. Yet the final showdown between the frats (which DJ participates in last-minute, natch) feels like another canned go-team-go up-lifter. In the words of DJ, Stomp the Yard may be a “pretender,” but it’s still a pretty good one.