Movie Review: Stomp the Yard

Despite its lead-footed title, Stomp the Yard is a Romeo-Juliet love story played out on the campus of Atlanta's Truth University, where the good-girl daughter of the school's provost falls for a new student who was involved in a fight that left his brother dead.

There's also plenty of gymnastic-style dancing, or stomping, in the film which involves lots of foot stomping, arm waving, cartwheeling and somersaulting. Stomping is supposed to be the descendant of the "Boot Dance,'' which came from the stomping done by black slaves who worked the coal mines. But it looks more like breakdancing on speed. Certainly it suits the talents of star Columbus Short, an actor-choreographer who once was on stage in the touring company of Stomp and was the lead in the film Save the Last Dance 2.

Short plays DJ Williams, whose problems with the law in his home town of Los Angeles prompt his aunt and uncle to bring him to Georgia. His uncle, a maintenance man at Truth University, pulls strings to get him a scholarship and a job as a gardener on the campus.

During registration, the pretty April Palmer (Meagan Goode) catches his eye. She already has a possessive boyfriend. Even before her father, who chose her law-student boyfriend for April, discovers that DJ has been in trouble with the law and lied on his scholarship application, he disapproves of him. He's a part-time gardener and very urban, after all. Nevertheless, DJ pursues April and eventually there's electricity between them.

The script by Robert Adetuyi, who co-wrote the dreadful Code Name: The Cleaner for Cedric the Entertainer, bounces between the ups and downs of their blossoming romance and the noisily athletic stomp dancing which takes center stage in some elaborately staged precision numbers.

Although it was DJ's prowess at stomping that won him local fame in L.A., it also was what brought on the fight in which his brother was killed. He swore off dancing when he arrived in Atlanta, but it turns out that, oddly enough, stomping is apparently the most important thing on campus at Truth. The several fraternities each have their own stomping teams which compete with each other and vie to represent the school at the National Stomping Championship. (Who knew?) To woo April, DJ joins a fraternity and, dismayed at the stodgy, well-rehearsed steps he finds there, sets out to liven things up with his urban moves.

You can guess the rest in this lively but predictable tale. There is one big melodramatic surprise sprung near the end that seems like the stretchiest of plot devices as well as the sudden unearthing of DJ's past criminal record which threatens to derail his college plans and his participation in the stomping competition. However, in a feel-good movie like Stomp the Yard, you know that all bad things must eventually go away through some miracle. You will not be disappointed in that.

Short and Goode are major pluses, however. They have an easy grace and naturalness in front of the camera and work well together to create strong chemistry that makes the film's romantic aspects work.

Also terrific are the stomp numbers. Although the athletic gyrations may seem more like gymnastics than dancing at first, the colorful choreography (by Dave Scott) is exciting and even breathtaking, especially in the imaginatively staged numbers that close this toe-tapping film.