Average Rating: 4.5/10
Reviews Counted: 89
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 66
While Stomp the Yard contains impressive musical and dance numbers, it loses its momentum during the intervening soap opera-style subplots.
Average Rating: 4.7/10
Critic Reviews: 27
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 19
While Stomp the Yard contains impressive musical and dance numbers, it loses its momentum during the intervening soap opera-style subplots.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.8/5
User Ratings: 446,320
A young man finds that the moves he learned on the street may help him make a better life for himself in this youth-oriented musical drama. DJ Williams (Columbus Short) is a 19-year-old growing up in Los Angeles; while DJ is at heart a good kid and a gifted street dancer, he runs with a dangerous crowd, and one night an underground dance competition turns into a brawl and DJ ends up in jail. DJ's younger brother has already died a violent death, and his mother, hoping to put him back on the
Jan 12, 2007 Wide
May 18, 2007
$61.4M
Screen Gems
All Critics (96) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (25) | Rotten (69) | DVD (19)
The moves can be remarkable, though ritually repetitive -- male chorus lines of adrenalized automata acting out anger, menace, pride, audacity or joy.
Stomp the Yard is a strange and at times strangely compelling mix of black fraternity recruitment video and inspirational tale about a hip-hop boy in a stepping world.
Perhaps director Sylvain White hoped that this laughably melodramatic film might find its way into the pantheon of urban dance films. But seen against such films as Rize and You Got Served, it's a step in the wrong direction.
The film introduces too many elements, doubles back on itself, repeats and repeats the same information, starts and stops, includes needless tangential riffs, finds artificial means to stretch the running length and is in every way a flabby mess.
The script, based on an earlier screenplay by a Florida A&M alum, accomplishes little -- it's basically Drumline, with dancing instead of drum corps.
The cast adds little. Columbus Short, a dancer-turned-actor, can move well, but he mugs too much for the camera when he's supposed to be having fun, and barely holds the screen when he's not.
It's a little bit of a musical, a little bit of a sports film, a little bit coming-of-age story. And none of it, beyond the dancing, any good.
Well-intentioned film steps up the melodrama.
The dance sequences are strong, but everything else is weak. Like, I can't pick up this pencil, much less dance, weak.
I would say that I found more of interest in this featurette than I did in the entire film.
... the film as a whole lacks the energy of its dance numbers.
At a time of year when theaters are filled with flashy, fun, but empty offerings, Stomp The Yard is a surprisingly satisfying alternative.
It's not a great movie, no, and maybe not even a particularly good one. But it's likable and unassuming, and the dancing is off the hook, or whatever the kids are saying these days.
A United Negro College Fund PSA for anyone interested in obtaining a Ph.D. in bling and booty calls. A mind is a terrible thing to lose.
Sucks critically, poor acting and script but still bearable to watch.
July 31, 2011Super Reviewer
Always been a sucker for dance films and this didn't fail to impress. It was a breath of fresh air to find a dancing film that had a different sort of dance. I'd never heard of stomping before I watched this film so it really made it different from the other dance films I'd seen. Good film!
June 23, 2011
Super Reviewer
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