The Backdancers! review

I will preface this review by making these three things clear: I hate dancing, I hate dance clubs, and I hate movies about dancing in clubs. So when I say that I actually enjoyed “The Backdancers!” I don’t want anyone to think it’s because I’m a closet hip-hop dance fan who has “You Got Served” in my Netflix queue. Frankly it took me by surprise that a movie about a unit of backup dancers without a pop star to dance behind could possibly be fun or interesting, but “The Backdancers!” does a good job at poking fun at the whole “idol” industry without actually ever condemning it. The plot seems even more poignant now than when the movie first came out in early 2006, considering how many high-profile Jpop stars have abruptly quit companies like Upfront Agency recently, most likely leaving countless dancers, fellow unit members, and support staff in the lurch.

Miu (Aya Hirayama) and Yoshika (Hiroko Shimabukuro, aka hiro of SPEED fame) are two high schoolers that spend their nights dancing in a Tokyo club for fun. Unfortunately one night the club gets raided by Shinjuku police who are there to check IDs. Because Miu refuses to leave her bag behind both her and Yoshika are caught and their arrest causes them both to get kicked out of school. With nowhere to be and no club to dance in a fellow underaged girl named Juri (Yu Hasebe) invites them to dance in an empty parking lot space where a DJ named Kei plays his eclectic mix of dance music and records from the 70s. One day a bumbling senior manager from Booty Records shows up to scout talent and picks Juri out of the group as the girl he’s going to turn into a star. As an after-thought Miu and Yoshika are hired later on to be two of her backup dancers, along with Aiko (Saeko) and a sarcastically bubbly 25-year-old hostess named Tomoe (Sonim). In a stroke of genius bumbling manager #2 decides to name them “Juri with Backdancers” and their road to stardom is paved.

A few years later Juri with Backdancers has their first major hit song and a large fanbase. However, Juri informs everyone that she’s quitting to get married to an IT Manager that looks exactly like Won Bin (he doesn’t). Having made the exact same threat three separate times that year, nobody takes her particularly seriously, so when she announces her retirement to a packed crowd at the end of a concert her backup dancers are understandably shocked. The record company executives decide that Juri will most likely change her mind and come back, so in an effort to keep the remaining Backdancers happy they assign band manager Chano the task of keeping them together. Unsure of what to do with a unit of dancers without a singer, he teams them up with the aging rock band Steel Crazy for a few small shows.

Unfortunately, they become expendable when rival group “Mayu with Super Tiger” scores a major hit and The Backdancers are summarily disbanded. Each of the girls goes off to do their own thing for a while, but eventually they all realize that they love dancing together too much to give it all up so easily. With the help of Chano and his PR-expert co-worker Mihama they set up a huge dance-only performance to prove that they can make it without Juri.

It stands to reason that anyone interested in Jpop or synchronized dance routines is probably going to enjoy this movie. But thankfully that’s not all there is to like about it. Above all else “The Backdancers!” is a comedy, and establishes early on that it’s not going to take itself too seriously. Even the dramatic moments are, for the most part, punctuated by something silly. And while I probably would have liked the movie more had they completely ditched the contrived drama and obligatory sobby moments, I can appreciate that the fanbase they were aiming for wouldn’t really go for wall-to-wall absurdity. Nevertheless, “The Backdancers!” has enough dancing and music to appeal to its intended audience and enough comedy and storyline to appeal to everyone else. Just send your brain on a 2-hour vacation and check it out.

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Availability: Hong Kong distributor CN Entertainment released "The Backdancers!" on region 3, NTSC DVD with English and Chinese subtitles. For full specs, see this link.

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