Shawn's Never Back Down Review

2008 Movie # 33 - Never Back Down

Ah movie 30. That's more movies than I would say the majority of the general public sees in a year, let alone in two and a half months. As someone who has watched a ton of garbage in these last few weeks, I'm actually pretty jealous of those people. They have no idea just how many bad movies really do come out in any given year.

With Step Up 2 The Streets I at least got some enjoyment out of it because I was watching it with a group of friends and we were free to make fun of it. I also wondered if it would have been any fun at all watching it by myself or whether it would just be god awful. Well thank you Never Back Down for arriving and giving me the answer. I didn't get to watch this one with any friends but I'm sure we would have had a blast tearing the thing apart. However alone, this thing was just terrible, even embarrasing on some level.

I don't even really know where to begin in my evisceration of this movie. The best summary is to say that there is absolutely no reason for this movie to exist. No reason at all. The plot is the same stupid shit you've seen thousands of times before only know you can mix in some unexciting fighting. It essentially is Step Up 2 The Streets but with lame fighting instead of actually pretty cool dancing. It takes some actual effort to make yourself worse than Step Up, but congrats to this one because it certainly pulled it off.

The acting is just amateur across the board with too many ridiculously retarded attempts at drama that come off as just a bad after school special. The audience would almost always laugh at these scenes and it's really hard not to. They're just that fucking stupid and happen way too often.

Whenever there isn't a scene like that, there is just a montage. I would say at least 1/4 of this beast is just a fucking montage set to some generic sounding pop rock song. Also this isn't connected at all but jesus christ does the lead guy ever fucking look like 80's era Tom Cruise. It's kinda scary actually.

So this movie only remains entertaining throughout its running time because it's baffling to see just how stupid it gets as it goes along. There has to be at least a dozen moments where you think "my god it can't get any stupider". Alas you should never underestimate Never Back Down's commitment because it rises to the occasion time and time again.

* 1/2 /5