Bravetown kicks off in New York City, where seventeen-year-old Josh (Lucas Till) is making a name for himself in the clubs. He is overdoses on drugs one night, and is arrested. He is made to move in with his father, who he doesn't really have a relationship with, and lives in a very small town in middle America. At his new high school, he is convinced to help out the struggling dance team. He gets close to the team's captain, Mary (Kherington Payne), and through her he gets a glimpse of the pain that is lying just beneath the surface of this seemingly normal town.
The film is playing in two sandboxes. On the one hand, this is a totally cliché dance movie, with a rebellious outsider finding new purpose in helping a group of dancers win a series of competitions. And on the other, this is a film about a town that has seen too many of its sons go off to war. It is hard to say if these two concepts are inherently incompatible, but their intersection in this film results in one of the strangest cinematic and narrative trainwrecks in recent memory.
Taken purely as a dance movie, Bravetown is decidedly subpar. This is a genre that already carries low expectations, but the film consistently disappoints in this aspect of its production. We could start with the fact that dancers don't magically become better when they get a good DJ behind the booth. They don't suddenly learn how to become current and relevant. And we could go on to how the dance sequences, even when they're supposed to be good already, still look pretty bad. The choreography is generally uninspired, at times even thoroughly questionable. And the shooting of them makes everything look worse.
It is the other side of this movie that is more intriguing. There is certainly merit in studying the psyche of an entire town suffering from the collective trauma of losing family to far off wars. But letting these elements play second fiddle to the dance stuff limits what can done. The film holds off on revelations for a bit too long, and it ends up forcing catharsis through the weirdly insensitive badgering of the outsider protagonist. The main character seems to think that he knows what's best for these people, even though he's just some punk teenager from New York City.
Where the film really gets crazy is the point where these two plotlines meet. It results in a dance sequence so misguided and grotesque that it plays like parody. I won't spoil the whole thing, but it might be helpful to know that this is a dance sequence that features a visual homage to the movie Platoon. It is so tone deaf that it borders on offensive. Not even an actress of the caliber of Laura Dern is able to sell that moment for what it is supposed to be. Everyone in this cast is perfectly all right, but no amount of talent can really overcome this movie's disquieting oddness.
It feels like Bravetown exists because of a perceived need to be commercial. There is certainly something to be said about the story of a town that lost too many young men to arguably unnecessary global conflicts. But someone might have decided along the way that the concept needed jazzing up. And so, it's put through the filter of "what are the kids into nowadays?" In lieu of a sensitive portrayal of a town's trauma, we get what feels like an old person's perception of the club scene, and a truly heinous climax that should be embarrassing to everyone involved.
My Rating:
