OPINION: The 2014 movie basically two-steps the entire plot of the classic coming-of-age-in-love film, beat for beat.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
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I used to joke that 2002’s Brown Sugar—quite possibly my favorite movie—should have been titled Love & Basketball 2: When They Put Down Basketballs and Picked Up Boomboxes. It was my tongue-in-cheek way of saying that the two movies bore an insane number of similarities.
Both are love stories that start as the protagonists are children who eventually grow into successful versions of themselves who try to live life apart only to realize that they should have been together all along. Both are great movies with some of the landmark Black actors of the era, but for all their similarities, the movies bring entirely different things to the table: Brown Sugar is more comedy; Love & Basketball is more dramedy. The former is about the industry as much as it is about the love story; the latter is all about the love story and the decisions you make because of it.
Really swell stuff and understandably worth mining for content, or at least further inspiration for a love story.
So imagine my surprise as I started watching The Next Dance when it literally opened up in the exact same fashion as Love & Basketball. The boy next door shows up to see his neighbor—the girl next door, natch—dancing, makes friends and then they get into an argument about who should be dancing, resulting in the boy pushing the girl down, giving her a scar for life. The families meet, and they all sort it out, but the girl, Selena, and the boy, Tristian, become best friends as they grow into young adults.
As Selena’s family falls apart due to her father’s cheating ways, you see her (on several occasions) slip across the backyard to Tristian’s room to sleep on the floor for safety and comfort. Ya know, just like that other movie.
Selena (played by Danielle Curiel, also known now as today!
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