Written by: Chris Stokes
Starring: Marques Houston, Omari Grandberry, Jarell Houston, De’Mario Thornton, Dreux Frederic
Rating: [1.5/5]
While directing, writing, lighting, and a whole host of elements carry incredible importance to the success of a film, they can be quickly undone when having actors who completely bungle the whole thing. After all, they are the faces of the film and mainly what audience members engage with when watching a film. Even with having some fun dance battles, which serves as the main draw, You Got Served got hampered not only by its lackluster plot, but probably the worst collective acting display by a cast probably ever put to film.
With a bond as strong as brothers, Elgin (Marques Houston) and David (Omari Grandberry) lead a dance group that has grown quite the reputation. To make ends meet the pair also run drugs for a local drug dealer and when they get challenged to a dance battle where they must put up $5,000, they do what they need to in order to make this payday something possible, which comes with its mighty risks.
Writing what I did in the introductory paragraph may come off as hyperbolic in my description of the work done by its cast but at every turn the line delivery done by these actors left me aghast that the director did not ask them to try it again and say the line as a human and not trying to act like one. A complete dereliction of duty by Chris Stokes in his efforts to create characters the audience should care about but when they receive a screenplay this razor-thin and actors who cannot act to save their lives it makes for one horrific medley. It leaves one major question that could possibly save this film: do the dance scenes make up for it? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is no.
Now that’s not to say the dance scenes were not competent as I do not have much room to judge as someone who knows nothing about the technicalities of dance choreography. Everything looked quite good when these characters did all of their moves in order to win over the crowd. From the more street-style battles where no rules exist and the larger competition that takes place in the third act of the film, it shows at the very least the cast of the film brought into dance knew how to succeed in this portion of the film. However, this took place within a feature film and that requires having a competent story, which we did not receive here in the slightest.
Not trying to get into spoilers in this feature, but the way this film manages to set things up and go absolutely nowhere within the plot is simply astounding. This occurs at its most egregious with the storyline involving the drug dealer and our two leads. An element of the film that builds up this fear in our characters of what will happen if they do not come up with the money owed to him and the way it gets waved away not by seeing something but rather explained away displayed that this feature had no interest in telling a story that mattered. To give so much lip service to a plot line and not adequately resolve simply makes no sense and that happens with various story beats in this feature, which further displayed this feature only wanting to tread water as it moved from one dance sequence to another. An idea that would work if the dance sequences completely blew expectations out of the water, but this feature could not make such a claim.
Just an all-around dud that certainly had some good potential as I enjoy a good dance movie and can forgive certain deficiencies but not to the degree needed for You Got Served. Just an all-around disaster in everything other than the dancing. Chris Stokes failed to deliver both with his pen and prowess behind the camera to save this film and left his subpar actors out to dry as they delivered the already shoddy dialogue in such an unconvincing manner. To say I have seen better acting in a Disney Channel Original Movie would seem like a cruel statement but also it carries plenty of accuracy in comparison to this completely unfortunate film.
Films with Josh 
