Step Up: All In - film review

Like your optician, a new Step Up film comes along precisely every two years to test your eyes with fancy lenses, asking you to choose between mostly indistinguishable alternatives. Unlike your optician, the Step Up films do so shirtless and with considerable good humour. I know which biennial appointment I’m better at keeping.

This may be the most endearingly unpretentious of all Hollywood’s factory-line franchises: grab a pack of indecently ripped dancers with acting skills that could kindly be termed secondary, have them bust their most gravity-defying moves on camera, cobble together enough of a script to link the 3D dance-offs and hey presto, the spirit of Busby Berkeley lives on.

This fifth instalment is a particularly economical one, recycling sundry cast members from the previous chapters for a narrative that is anaemic even by Step Up standards. A dance contract at Caesar’s Palace is up for grabs and returning lead hunk Sean (the beautifully inexpressive Ryan Guzman) wants it for his new Los Angeles crew. The story may be light, but the cast’s feet are even lighter: among the spectacular choreographic showpieces are a mad scientist-themed routine in an engineering lab and a nine-minute finale that fuses ballet, breakdance and Steampunk styling. See you in 2016, guys.