Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984)
(On Cable TV, October 2019) In the pantheon of movies more famous for their title than their content, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo has achieved a special notoriety. The subtitle can and has been applied to everything else as a signifier of “stupid movie sequel title,” and it feels vaguely sacrilegious to actually check out the actual movie. The result is … mixed. Released eight months after the original film, it’s clearly undercooked: the dialogue is serviceable, the storyline is the same “put on a show to save the community centre” nonsense we’ve seen since the 1930s and the characterization is paper-thin. Still, they did a lot in those eight months: There are a few spectacular numbers thrown in the mix here, bringing along a shift toward more classical musical comedy numbers in which everybody in the neighbourhood starts dancing to the same song. Such homages to classic musicals seem near to Electric Boogaloo’s heart—there’s notably a dance sequence using a rotating gimbal set that harkens back to Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling. It’s cute, and frankly the story (as hackneyed as is it) does feel stronger and more substantial even in its clichés than the first film: There’s even quite a bit of class commentary. Ice-T is back to the forefront, while two-movie actress Sabrina Garcia has a cute little comedy role entirely in Spanish and lead Lucinda Dickey once again fails to impress. As a much-derided title, Electric Boogaloo is perhaps a bit better than you’d expect, but you do have to be in the mood for a bit of a cultural time travel back to 1984 to appreciate it.