Raya (Rutina Wesley) hopes to dance her way out of a dead-end existence in How She Move.

PARAMOUNT VANTAGE / Ian Watson

The dancers are in frenzied, high-energy mode in the dance-athon movie How She Move.

Well she move pretty fast in what should be a toe-tapping movie. But the script is something we’ve seen a dozen times before, whenever writers are assigned to come up with a plot about an underdog dancer/football team/basketball team/baseball team/hockey team/cheerleader trying to win against great odds.

In this case the plot revolves around Raya Green (Rutina Wesley), the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who has been unhappily forced to return to public school after her parents have spent all their money unsuccessfully trying to rescue her sister from drug addiction. They no longer can afford Raya’s tuition at an exclusive prep academy, and so she’s back in the school where her peers think she’s a snob for having tried to get a better education.

Ever since she can remember, Raya has wanted to get out of the ’hood, or at least as much of a ’hood as can be found in Ontario, Canada, where this low-budget film was shot, apparently using a lot of capital from Canadian TV outlets judging from the number of them represented in the film’s final credits. Perhaps that’s why it looks so much like a TV movie, although it was an audience hit at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. But what can account for the movie’s washed-out colors? It should sparkle, but looks only dreary.

There seems to be no way out for Raya until she hears about a step competition in Detroit with a $50,000 cash prize. If she wins it, she feels can finally break away again to a better life. Stepping, an offshoot of break dancing, involves a lot of high-stepping stomping around, somersaults and some well-choreographed moves.

Raya quickly gets a spot with the all-male Jane Street Junta, known as JSJ, led by a champion stepper named Bishop (Dwain Murphy). There seems to be a sort of tense chemistry between them, until Raya messes up and breaks ranks during one of their intricately laid-out routines by doing her own thing. Kicked out of JSJ by Bishop, she is snatched up by a rival step crew also on its way to Detroit.

Hmm, looks like a big showdown, but Raya’s loyalties still count for something. Add her reluctant mother, who doesn’t want Raya to take part in any of this dance “foolishness” and advises her that “smart girls win” in the end. Although some roadblocks are tossed up in the script by Annmarie Morais, there are not enough to throw off the predictable outcome in a film where the moves are more important than the plot.

** 1/2How She Move

Starring: Rutina Wesley, Dwain Murphy, Tre Armstrong.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, profanity, drug references.

mjanuson@projo.com