tep Up is your basic Saturday-Night-Fever-meets-Fame formula - the poor boy with the troubled background and the rich girl who has everything but love - marketed to young viewers happy enough to part with cash and requiring no creativity in return. While the beats are infectious and seductive, this dance flick loses momentum early and stumbles when the kids aren't dancing.

First-time director Anne Fletcher insisted on actors who could dance and used no stunt doubles. By doing so, she achieved solid results in the dancing department, guided along by former “it” model Channing Tatum. Tatum is Tyler Gage, a genial Baltimore kid who lives with a foster family on the wrong side of town, as evidenced by his baseball cap on backwards. He can dance, though - damn, that boy can dance.

But perhaps dancing has stunted his imagination, as he doesn't seem to even dream of ways to escape his seedy Baltimore neighbourhood. So, he boosts cars for a living and sells them to a chop shop; Mac Carter (Glory Road's Damaine Radcliff) and his brother Skinny (De'Shawn Washington) the other wannabe gangbangers.

Tyler takes the rap when he and his friends are caught vandalizing a school auditorium. His punishment is 200 hours of community service doing janitorial work at the school, which happens to be the ultra-elite Maryland High School of the Arts.