You Got Served – Take it to the Streets

You Got Served is a 2004 film about competitive street dancing  in Los Angeles and not – as you might have a supposed -  a reboot of 1970s comedy Are you being served? There is a disappointing absence of lilac haired old ladies making veiled vagina references

Not the same thing at all

 

What the film does have, though, is an abundance of cool dance moves. So if cool dance moves were what  you were after then this was the very film for you. Particularly if you were none too bothered about convincing acting or a decent plot.

And if after watching it, you walked away thinking “Man, I’d love to dance like that. If only the choreographer would give me step-by-step instructions on how to dance like David and Elgin and their crew” then, boy, were you in luck. They totally had your back, bro.

This could be you

You Got Served: Take it to the streets was released the same year and is fronted by the film’s choreographer Dave Scott who invites you to “Learn the Dance Moves Step by Step”

Dave is joined by the coolest bunch of people you ever saw. Dave’s an unbelievably cool guy himself.  Trainers on workout DVDs always try to act cool but you can usually see through their bravado to the panicked desperate persona beneath. Not so, Dave. He got nothing to prove to nobody, He probably didn’t even need to make this DVD he just did it to give share the street dancing love with the little guy. He’s that kind of badass.

Choreographers do not get any cooler than this.

All Dave’s crew are dancers from the movie. This includes Robert James Hoffman III who played the bad guy’s sidekick, Max. Unfortunately RJHIII is by far and away the least cool guy there. And not just because he’s white. Dante next to him probably displays more attitude cleaning his teeth than young Mr III does busting his very best shapes.

But then Dante wasn't in She's the Man so Rob probably wins after all

 

The DVD starts off with a warm-up which requires greater flexibility and quicker reactions than most celebrity workout DVDs do in their entirety. There are two dance routines based on particular dances from the movie as well as an extra one that Dave made up just for us. Because he loves us.

The dance instructions basically can be broken down to this: (1) Do a million different things quickly and in succession. (2) Look cool while you’re doing it. I didn’t excel at this.

At the beginning of the third dance routine, Dave starts his introduction when, oh my goodness, who should turn up all unexpectedly but Chris Jones or “Chris Jones!  Christopher Jones from the movie. Hey, my man.” as Dave greets him. To be fair Jones’ mum probably welcomes him the same way when he nips home for Sunday lunch. Jones played Wade the spiky haired nemesis of the film’s main characters. He’s still sporting the same Dragon Ball Z hairstyle in this which means he’s either turned up in character or he actually does have hair like that.

Spot the difference

The film’s two leading actors, Omari Grandberry and Marques Houston bust some freestyle moves on the  DVD extras luckily for the DVD producers who can then stick the most famous guys on the box with gay abandon.

Difficulty Level
This was insane. Crazy, crazy difficult.  You might think it was difficult learning all the moves to Hannah Montana’s Hoedown Throwdown. And you’d be right hypothetical reader, it was. But it’s got nothing on this.  There are eight million different moves for each dance and they all involve weird things like pretending to pull someone’s trousers down.

Best Bit

The big freestyle party at the end. Even the DJ Richard gets to show us his dance moves. Robert III seems to be doing an impression of a velociraptor because why not.

Would I do this workout again?

I would have to watch this many, many, many times in order to have a hope of doing these dance moves in vaguely the right times. Literally hundreds. I’m not sure where I would find the time. There is an interview with Chris Stokes, the director of the original film on the DVD extras. He tells us we can achieve anything we set our minds to and we should never let anyone else get the way of our dreams. Which is nice but I still think I may have to shelve my ambitions of becoming a freestyling hip-hop street dancer.  I’m not entirely sure I have what it takes to pop, lock, flip freeze and do that thing where you spin on your head for ages. It’s a tragic loss for the world, I know. In a very real sense, we all got served.