Picture: 
Sound: 
Extras: 
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Movie: Picture: Sound: Extras:
Fortunately the dancing is modern, influenced by the gymnastic hip-hop culture, along with some of the freak-show moves that are relatively common. It is easy to watch, and definitely not boring.
The story follows the usual trajectory of this kind of thing: a competition is coming up and the good guys simply have to win. The good guys are good because they are led by a charitable guy, while the bad guys are bad because they are led by a 'trust fund kid' who was also disloyal.
I thought it went along well enough, with one nice little surprise in there. But the trick with these movies is not the story, but whether or not the winning dancers actually are better than their competition, and whether this can be conveyed in film. Once again, a good enough job of this was done for the most part. There were also reminiscences of earlier works, with one side giving way to the menace suggested by the other's dance (West Side Story), and a two minute uncut boy/girl dance down the street. Sort of like Gene Kelly, but not as good. Still, impressive for the continuous tracking camera.
The music to which the dancing is taking place is modern and fairly undistinguished. The sound mix is forward and thrusting, but there's a section early in the piece in which the aural sense of a dance club is perfectly captured.
This is a strange pair of discs for Universal. It has a house style for presenting Blu-ray menus, and its discs are mostly mastered by Deluxe Digital Studios. This one was done by Sony DADC, and lacks the little things that say 'Universal'. Presumably this is because of the fragmented distribution arrangements (Disney in the US, Universal here and in the UK, Paramount in NZ). Happily, despite this, the disc is delivered Region Free.
The 3D effect is good enough, and adds a little to the viewing experience, but you get a 2D disc as well (with a lower bitrate). Both have the same limited number extras: eight standard definition music videos.
(Australian rating); Region Free
The following video bitrate graphs were generated by BDInfo 0.5.7. This is for the main video stream of the 3D version of the movie:
And this is for the MVC 3D stream:
And this is for the 2D version of the movie:
