DAVE ELSEWHERE IS TOTALLY IN “YOU GOT SERVED”!!!

Here’s the deal: “You Got Served” is, in fact, both the best and worst of the new school of urban dance films. It is a film divided in two, a dichotomous adventure into breathtaking dance scenes choreographed (and music-directed) by a conceptual genius. And yet, it was cobbled together by a writer and editor who are clearly hoarding the last stash of legal ephedra in the country.
DJ Juggernaut was wrong; there is a plot, and you definitely notice it. There is so much plot that it’s not inconceivable all members of B2K wrote it in a long round of exquisite corpse. Essentially, this crew of dancers (mainly B2K’s Omarion + Marques Houston) battle other dance crews in this Dance Battle Warehouse (presumably), where Steve Harvey plays the judge/referree/father figure/friendly neighborhood caretaker guy, whose name is “MR. RAD.” Right away it’s unbelievable because 1. who battles using hiphop-video dance steps? and 2. One of the B2K guys is wearing a Blazers jersey, yet the film takes place in Los Angeles. (While that isn’t inconceivable in and of itself, the jersey is a RASHEED WALLACE jersey. Sheed is reportedly pals with Shaq and Kobe, but the half-life of Sheed fans in LA seems short at best. I know Kobe fans barely last half a second in PDX.)
As you know from the trailer, the B2K dance crew is challenged by this totally wack rich white kid (his wackness is embarrassing, but even more terrible is his hairdo, which is pretty much the “punk for total chotches” style of gelled spike). As you also know from the trailer, our heroes “get served” by the wack rich white kid (from the OC!! of COURSE he has terrible hair), because, in a “Bring It On”-like development, his crew STEALS THEIR MOVES. But then Omarion starts dating Marques’ sister and they run drugs for this doooorky don called Emerald (although they never actually say it’s drugs, so they could be smuggling duffel bags of bootleg Capezio Dancesneakers, for all we know), and Marques gets jumped by some dudes and his LEG is broken (HIS LEG??!?!), and there’s an inexplicable 15-minute basketball scene and this little 8-year-old kid joins their crew if he promises to stop “hustling” (HUSTLING!?!?!?), and Marques borrows money from his grandma and there’s a dance contest for $50,000, to be in Lil’ Kim’s new video.
You’re going WHAT THE FUH, and I’m going SERIOUSLY.
Example scene:
GRANDMA: “Something seems wrong… are you having sex?”
MARQUES WYATT’s CHARACTER [embarrassed]: “Aw, grandma!”
GRANDMA: “What? I DIAPERED IT, I CAN ASK ABOUT IT!!”
This is as funny in its disgusting absurdity as the dis on the new Z-Man album (“Dope or Dog Food,” Hieroglyphics), “I ATE YOUR GIRL WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT,” and actually provoked audible “EWWWW”s in the theater. The other chorus of “EWW”s came when Omarion from B2K kissed his girl in the film, and pterodactylly swooped down upon her esophagus–eyes half-open, tongue extended–for a french like a vacuum cleaner.)
But the music is AWESOME! Yes, the 10-year-old sitting next to me rhymed along to the entirety of Ludacris’ “Stand Up,” but dudes flipped aerials and headspins to music by Blackalicious, Aceyalone, Joe Budden, MOP, even TROUBLE FUNK! There is something exhilarating about watching battle-influenced choreography, girl crews dusting boy crews by bouncing booty in their faces, to the sound of “Ante Up.” (Youngs Ho and Chris once rightly equated the feeling of “Ante Up” with that of wanting to fuck bricks.) The dancing, again, is very MTV style (some of it was done by the *NSync/Britney choreographer Wade Robson, who makes a cameo in the film and whose hair is frosted). BUT, in the triumphant finale, ACTUAL Los Angeles b-boys get the stage, INCLUDING DAVE ELSEWHERE!! Watch the linked video–his popping is like watching toothpaste oozing out of a tube. His name is Elsewhere cause he’s on some other shit.
Here’s the “You Got Served” forum on bboy.org, which identifies some of the YGS steps and more of the bboys, too.
Lil’ Kim is practically edited out of the movie, thanks to the aforementioned cocaine editing. Her big line is “I like it straight hood,” and sounds forced. The best rapper cameo in an urban dance movie ever award still goes to Missy Elliott in “Honey,” whose charismatic 3-minute performance negates every second of bad acting in the entire movie.
But she better keep her head up: Mya could really sweep it with her cameo in “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.”