Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo

There’s a party in my parachute pants, and everyone’s invited. Reviewed by popular demand, this 80’s time capsule is a bona-fide bargain bin exploitation classic, albeit for reasons the filmmakers never intended. You see, despite the warm fuzzy place many children of the ’80’s have in their heart for nostalgia like this, people seem to have forgotten that this movie sucks ass. In fact, if sucking ass were an Olympic event, Breakin’ 2 would get the gold with 10’s across the friggin’ board.

By combining all of the worst aspects of the decade we’re trying to forget, it manages to nearly drain breakdancing of every ounce of its coolness in the process. Almost. While better than the original Breakin’, this isn’t something to brag about. Breakin’ is quite possibly the only film in history that Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo is superior to.

Shamelessly stealing the entire plot of Roller Boogie and substituting dancing for skating, the movie also follows the Hollywood tradition of making a white actor the main character in an otherwise ethnic film. Meet Kelly, the rich whitebread kid who never breakdances during the movie and exists merely to ensure crossover appeal by “introducing” the white members of the audience to the new dance phenomenon sweeping the nation. The real dancing is left to Adolfo “Shabba Doo” Quinones and Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers, who co-star as “Ozone” and “Turbo,” leaders of the TKO, a dance youth group whose members have similar American Gladiator names. Kelly befriends them to the dismay of her square parents, who insist she go to Princeton (ha!). “It’s my life, dad!” She defiantly yells in a fiery depiction of repressed suburban rebelliousness, and soon she’s got the hots for rebel-without-a-brain Ozone. He’s reluctant to commit, however, as evident by his poignant observation “Girls are whack!” The remainder of the film consists of her watching Turbo and Ozone try to out-gay each other. The jury is still out as to who won that one, but let me just say that when the “unhip, boring parents” of the protagonist come across as far more normal than the supposedly cool main characters, you know something’s fucked up in Denmark.

You haven’t seen hair this bad since, well, Hair, and even The Wedding Singer’s supposedly exaggerated 80s style pales in comparison to the shit these people wear in Breakin’ 2. Calling this movie “dated” is the understatement of the century. Prunes are dated. This shit is re-God-damn-diculous. The characters deliver dialogue like “Don’t lay the jive on me, man!” and “I can’t hang baby, you dig?” with straight faces, and periodically music will begin playing from no discernable source as the characters break into song and dance. A typical example is an early scene straight out of West Side Story, where the TKO confronts rival dance gang the Electrodes. Just when it looks like there’s gonna be a rumble, the gangs bust into a ‘break off’ to resolve their differences and begin poppin’ and lockin’ in sync with the off-screen techno-rap. This may be the only film on earth to incorporate nunchucks into dancing as well. Apparently, TKO out-dances the Electrodes, who admit defeat and leave their turf, which just goes to show, kids, that dancing around in pastel puffy pants can prevent a violent altercation. When Ozone and Kelly finally get together, the obligatory meet-the-rich-parents/fish-out-of-water scene appears as the unrefined street kid enters the white people’s mansion. Let the hijinks ensue. He uses phrases that white writers think black people say like “Sup” and “Word” and puts his elbows on the dinner table and shit like that. AHHH HA HA! HE DOESN’T KNOW FORMALITIES! HE’S POOR! THAT’S SOME FUNNY FUCKING SHIT! Sorry, the whole culture clash joke just gets me every time. Anyway, of course Kelly think he’s cute, her parents hate him, blah fucking blah they all have to breakdance for another ten minutes. Then the writers had to go and toss in a throwaway plot: enter the Evil Old Rich White Men, who want to build a mall where the group’s beloved community center is located for reasons too stupid to go into. Turbo elegantly expresses the concerns of his peers in possibly the longest single line in the film, where he warns one honkey, “Look here, hot shot, you can forget your plans, man, ’cause we’re gonna stop you, stop you cold!” You see, the community center keeps kids off the street, and apparently if it was torn down all the dancer kids would begin shooting smack and nine millimeters into each other. Clearly, there is but one thing to do: breakdance to save the neighborhood!

They raise money in a music montage that is yet another excuse to showcase many more dance numbers. The kids eventually come up short on the cash, so when peaceful means of protest fail, the dancers resort to, what else, harassing whitey. The ever-mischievous Turbo steals a measuring tape from some guys surveying the community center for demolition and breakdances around, until he accidentally breakdances headfirst down three flights of stairs and ends up in the emergency room. His buddies all show up to support him, however, and in what is arguably the film’s most ludicrous bit, they start breakin’ down the halls of the hospital as nurses and wheelchair-bound patients leap up to join in. This sequence must be seen to believed, especially when four surgeons have their patient die on them, look sad for a moment, then start breakin’. And what do you know, the patient’s heart starts beating again and he jumps up and works a few supa-dope-wack-fly moves of his own. Yes, not only can breakin’ bring the dead back to life, in this movie it prevents turf wars, pays the bills, makes the injured walk and even stops bulldozers in their tracks when the community center is about to be leveled but the bulldozers are danced into submission. Ice-T even shows up as the MC to make an ass of himself, and surprise, surprise, the little bitches save their clubhouse and stick it to the man at the same time, role credits.

A couple decent dance sequences stand out from this otherwise unremarkable waste of celluloid. It’s hard to be cool when you’re decked out in puffy socks, a headband, a perm, one dangly earring and a tanktop. And you’re a dude.