DIRECTED BY: Greg Robbins
FEATURING: Christina DeMarco, Greg Robbins
PLOT: A teenage girl who dreams of dancing the ballet is stricken with leukemia, and with that diagnosis discovers she also has gained telepathy and the power to convert the secular to evangelical Christianity.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: “You’re right… this is very weird,” writer/director/star Greg Robbins tells his cancer-ridden daughter when a gang of juvenile delinquents spontaneously profess their instantaneous love of Christ after she telepathically shows them a clip of Jesus being nailed to the cross. But what little weirdness C Me Dance shows comes from Robbins ignoring the demands of narrative craft and instead cramming his film full of simplistic dogma and sermons. The horrid acting, risible dialogue, laughably ineffectual Prince of Darkness and absurdly obvious theological ploys may make C Me Dance worth a few snickers, but don’t be fooled. This is a dangerous movie—a film that’s capable of destroying one’s faith.
COMMENTS: “What was the Devil’s first act of deception? Convincing humanity that he didn’t exist,” says a pastor in C Me Dance, a quote that sounds hauntingly familiar. (Later, the movie will plagiarize The Exorcist, too: doesn’t the Bible say anything about not coveting thy neighbor’s screenplay?) According to C Me Dance, the Devil’s second and third acts of deception were wearing various shades of colored contact lenses and hiring an extra to stand behind him with a leaf blower so his trenchcoat billows menacingly. The movie’s shameless sermonizing and simplistic worldview results in an awkwardly didactic plot, which is only made more ridiculous by the insane decision to make a low budget, G-rated Satan the film’s literal antagonist. The result is something like what a born again cameraman for the old “ABC Afternoon Special” might have made, if the show’s producer had allowed him to direct a single episode with half the usual budget on condition that he stop bugging him about accepting Christ as his personal savior. The acting wouldn’t cut the mustard on a tween sitcom on the Nickelodeon channel, but the mess is still Continue reading CAPSULE: C ME DANCE (2009)