I found out there was a 2015 movie called DANCIN’ – IT’S ON!, so obviously I had to see it. Primarily for the title, secondarily due to my affection for modern dance-off movies, thirdarily because it co-stars Gary Daniels (FIST OF THE NORTH STAR) and is co-written by David A. Prior (KILLER WORKOUT). I’m happy to say that it lives up to the goofiness you’d hope for from that combination of factors and is also more interesting than expected.

My favorites of the genre are STEP UP 2 THE STREETS and STEP UP 3, both directed by Jon M. Chu. Those have just the right mix of ludicrousness and actual style, cleverness and dancing. At times there could be debate about how much you’re laughing with it and how much you’re laughing at it, but it doesn’t really matter because you get caught up in the whole joyous spirit of the thing. DANCIN’ – IT’S ON! is definitely a cheaper, less cool and less competent version of that type of experience, with a cast made up of So You Think You Can Dance contestants, most of whom have not acted before or since, and give some very stiff line readings. But all of those things, combined with an element of sincerity I’ll get into later, make it a really fun time.

Its protagonist is Jennifer (Witney Carson), a cartoonishly rich Beverly Hills teen whose mom (Ava Fabian, former Playboy Playmate and title character in WELCOME HOME, ROXY CARMICHAEL) sends her against her will to spend the summer with her dad Jerry August at his hotel. Since he’s played by Daniels it’s mentioned that he was a fighting champion, but the only time it’s relevant is when he gives her boyfriend a friendly talk while practicing on the heavy bag for intimidation purposes.

You know this is gonna be an unusual movie when she arrives in Panama City, Florida and there’s a montage set to a song with the chorus “Oh oh, Panama City / You and me on the beach, so pretty.” She’s driven by the water slide, the pink garbage trucks, the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! museum (shaped like the Titanic), “The Original Goofy Golf,” there’s a sunset and time lapse. It straight up appears to be a tourism commercial. I’ve never seen anything like it in a movie, and this is less than five minutes in.

She left home complaining, but when she gets to the pretty beaches of Panama City she has a great attitude, smiles and is charmed by everything from the mime who directs her to her ride at the airport (a rare positive cinematic portrayal of a mime) to the Hit Parade Hotel doorman The Captain (Russell Ferguson, BATTLEFIELD AMERICA) who addresses her as “milady” and tries to hit her with sage advice every time she goes in or out, to the lobby full of circus performers and Rhett and Scarlett impersonators who inspire her to say GONE WITH THE WIND is her favorite movie (huge red flag there).

Jennifer and her dad haven’t seen each other in five years, three months and fourteen days (he thought it was only three years – great guy), but both are polite about it and try to get along. The trouble is he meddles in her love life, trying to get in the way of her crush on hunky hotel dishwasher and excellent dancer Ken (Chehon Wespi-Tschopp) and hook her up with dickish head bellboy (but also excellent dancer) Danny (Matt Marr). We meet Ken doing a working man’s dance number during his shift, but Jennifer first sees him in the lobby. There’s a really funny scene of her in a daze clearly thinking about what she wants to do to Ken while Danny tries to talk to her.

When she finally snaps out of it she says,”Hmm? Sorry. Yes, of course.”

Then there’s another funny scene where she dances with Ken at a “teen bash” and that time we get to see Danny staring angrily from the crowd, like Clubber Lang in that montage at the beginning of ROCKY III.

As one would assume there’s a big dance competition coming up, but Ken is already partnered with Shotsy (Jordan Clark, SILENT HILL: REVELATION), who is hot for him, so she and Danny try to interfere with Ken and Jennifer getting together.

There are some funny mood swings. When Jennifer lets Ken know her dad is making her go on a date with Danny, he gets mad at her (this is actually a bigger red flag than the GONE WITH THE WIND thing, this guy has serious anger issues, fortunately siphoned into dance), storms out, then yells at Shotsy that he doesn’t want to enter the contest anymore, then goes around outside at night angrily kicking over garbage cans and throwing deck chairs to the tune of a nu-metal-coded song, with the electric guitars and the terrible rapping and everything.

I was already getting a kick out of the movie, but here’s what really won me over: there’s this grumpy old hotel resident named Hal Sanders who’s always mean to Ken and also always brooding while looking at a framed photo of his dead son. The noise of Ken’s late night dance tantrum actually causes Hal to dream of an exploding helicopter and wake up. He goes to yell at Ken but not about the noise – he says he ruined his dance by throwing a chair into the pool.

When Ken yells at him “Dancing is my life, you don’t know a single thing about dancing!” Hal says “Oh no?” and does a little dance for him that makes Ken blurt out, “Whoah.” Hal refuses to say where he learned it and walks away. After a bit, Ken says out loud to no one, “He must’ve been a dancer.” Oh, wow, how did you pick up on that?

It was at this moment that it clicked for me that Hal is played by David Winters, the director and co-writer. I looked him up and he has a hell of a history with dance. He played Baby John in the original Broadway production of West Side Story, and played A-rab in the movie. He choreographed VIVA LAS VEGAS and EASY COME, EASY GO, which brings new meaning to the part where Ken and Jennifer do Elvis moves in front of a statue of him at a theme restaurant. Winters also did T.A.M.I. Show, KITTEN WITH A WHIP, The Star Wars Holiday Special and A STAR IS BORN. When Ken figures out that Hal was a famous dancer the clip he watches is of Winters dancing in Movin’ With Nancy, which he got an Emmy nomination for. He directed episodes of The Monkees, The Ann-Margret Show and a Raquel Welch special, then he produced LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT (he was dating Lovelace at the time).

In the ‘80s he got into exploitation. He directed THE LAST HORROR FILM, CODE NAME VENGEANCE, RAGE TO KILL and SPACE MUTINY. In 1986, angry that producers made him cast Josh Brolin in THRASHIN’ when he wanted Johnny Depp, he founded Action International Pictures with David A. Prior and Peter Yuval. Their first productions were DEADLY PREY, KILLER WORKOUT and MANKILLERS.

So after all that he decided he wanted to make one last dance film, and then he decided to play the grumpy but lovable dance sensei. Some of the squareness (such as the heartfelt but aggressively uncool songs by Ray Isaac) could likely be attributed to a 76-year-old director making a movie for teens, so you might expect Hal to be a laughable vanity role. But he’s a better actor than the rest of his cast, he really elevates the scenes and you realize that this is his passion. I find it endearing.

I guess the climactic dance contest must be the titular moment when IT’S ON!. There’s a pretty funny disconnect between the footage of a huge crowd going crazy and the close ups of The Captain emceeing, but it does look like they were filmed in the same place. I don’t think the crowd is watching what we are but I wonder if these were fans of So You Think You Can Dance going crazy for them? I guess this is Florida though, maybe it was just Spring Break.

Several humorously unlikely things happen during the contest. One – Jennifer looks into the crowd and sees that her mom secretly flew in and is cuddling with her dad!? Did she unknowingly PARENT TRAP them? Two, when Ken sees Danny and Shotsy do a good job he starts whining that they can’t win and is refusing to compete until Hal gives him a pep talk. And three, Danny (who has been a dickhead pulling dirty tricks the whole movie) magically has a good attitude, admits that Ken and Jennifer deserve to win and is happy about it. Dancin’ heals the world, that’s why It’s On!

Of course, there are tons of other random parts that are laugh out loud funny. I highly recommend checking out the weird sound effect they use for Ken’s scooter at the 16:07 mark. It sounds like a broken toilet. I rewound it three or four times. Also I like the part where her dad gives her a present, but then he opens it. Why did he do that?

The DVD has some pretty in-depth interviews on the red carpet of the premiere, and a making-of featurette with very serious narration about the production. Also interactive menus. Good stuff. When you watch DANCIN’ – IT’S ON! you will see dancin’, and you will find that it’s on!

Title note: IMDb and Wikipedia type it as DANCIN’: IT’S ON!, the cover makes it look like DANCIN’ IT’S ON! and the director pronounces it DANCING: IT’S ON in interviews, but I’m going with DANCIN’ – IT’S ON! because that’s how they do it on the opening credits.