Cast: Adam Garcia, Sam Worthington, Sophie Lee, Andrew Kaluski
Director: Dein Perry
Rating: M (violence, offensive language)
Running Time: 93 minutes
Screening: Village, Hoyts cinemas
Review: Russell Baillie
Of course, after seeing what is basically a movie melodramatisation of the origins of Aussie-export dance phenomenon Tap Dogs, there may well be the temptation
to try these moves at home.
And of course, after you have failed to maintain anything resembling a rhythm with your own two left feet, the otherwise amusingly bad film which desperately wants to be Full Monty by way of Strictly Ballroom suddenly gets its three stars.
Those boys sure can dance. Especially lead bloke Garcia - from this it's not hard to see why he's played the Travolta role in a stage production of Saturday Night Fever.
But the story wrapped around it by the director, Tap Dogs creator Dein Perry, and scriptwriter Steve Worland, is a rhythmless clunker, especially in its efforts to show Perry's hardbitten Aussie steeltown background.
That means abundant hoon violence and ripe language which doesn't have the humour to offset it and which sits uneasily in what is really a let's-put-on-a-show dance movie with an irrepressible protagonist and inevitable romantic complications.
At least the likes of Monty and Ballroom had the brains, performances and sense of humour to have fun with the same old story. This tries that. But with just about every character drawn in crayon, it just puts a flannel shirt and steelcaps on the cliches and goes with it.
Though it has its moments of unintentional humour, such as when Garcia playing Perry's alter-ago has a Newtonian revelation with a hammer about how dancing on steel plate will make all the difference for his fledging tap group.
Or how the film deals with the butch quotient of it all, its only gay moment slipped in rather apologetically.
Oh, and then there's the subplot involving the romantic triangle of Sean Garcia, his tap-dancing but dream-free brother (Worthington) and the girl they both have a hankering for (Lee, playing a hairdresser just like she did in The Castle) which is funnier than an entire season of Home and Away.
But heading to the big finale, it's easy to forget the exasperated drumming of your fingers on your seat arm and replace it with some foot-tapping beneath.
Yes, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire will undoubtedly be spinning in their graves with due flamboyant footwork. But Bootmen is still an enjoyable if ropy danceflick and we can take some satisfaction that it's really really going to annoy that Michael Flatley fella.
