1. Drop dead beautiful idealistic young hottie (I know that's redundant and I don't care)
2. Group of adorable scamps who are going to wind up in jail or the NBA of they don't get there big break dancing, singing, whatever.
3. Evil rich guy who wants to A. Tear down the beloved building where the crucial practice take place. B, seduce and destroy innocent hottie for his own nefarious purposes. C. Seduce and destroy adorable scamps recruiting them to a life of crime and bad dance numbers.
4. Colorful local characters with hearts of gold, sassy girlfriends, lovable barber and numerous characters recycled from "The Jefferson's" and "That's My Mamma" (yes I am that old, and who asked you anyway?)
5. Cliffhanger scenario where all will be lost if some large amounts of money are not raised just in time.
6. And of course the evil "other dancer" who seems ready to take Honey's spot when Honey refuses to do the casting couch hustle with the evil rich guy.
They used every toy in the box. Albas mother, a retired hottie, has noble ideas for her daughter, but is clueless as can be, at one point she actually says "You are 22 years old...you don't know what you want", to there credit, no one in the cast burst out laughing, the same cannot be said for the audience. As the time is running out and the noble Alba is faced with certain ruin if she can't come up with the cash, she is forced to resort to desperate means to raise the funds. I promise I won't give away the ending. Let's just say that it involves lots of adorable scamps handing out leaflets with the word "Benefit" on them, and the noble barber comes across with a place to perform (there were no barns available I guess), oh yeah and what movie like this would be complete without the established "big Star" coming to the rescue at the end. Anyone old enough to remember the Brady Bunch TV show will know that like Davey Jones, of the monkees fame, another celebrity with a big heart and a big name will suddenly;y materialize and save the day. Missy Eliot steals every scene she's in, she is easily the best part of this film, telling the evil dancer to "call MC Hammer and tell him you been stealing his moves" Ha Ha Ha, that never gets old. She could have said "Vanilla Ice" too, that would have been better, I think. But like in days of yore the lovable, energetic cast give it all they've got. They do handsprings and twirl around a lot and dance there little hearts out, gee I wonder if, in the end, Honey will triumph, and the new center will stay and "lil Romeo will see that the "home boys" he thought "had his back" were really just "wack" after all and will there be a lotta dancin and smilin during the end credits? I promised I wouldn't give away the ending and I won't. It would be easy to be critical of this film for the very same reason it should be praised. Given a choice I prefer that the glass be half full then empty. Even if we have seen this cornball story told a hundred times, there is always a generation of PG13 young people who will want to know that you don't have to sleep with someone to get ahead (it doesn't hurt to wear tiny tank tops that look like they were painted on though)that crime really does not pay, that people can overcome adversity (as long as they look really really hot and can dance). So what if we've seen it, perhaps some other people haven't, this will never go out of style and perhaps it never should.

The story is rather incidental, because it is just an excuse to have people legitimately dancing as opposed to the musical tradition where people suddenly break into song and dance. Honey Daniels (Alba) wants to be a dancer. She works at a record store by dance and tends bar at a club at night, and when she goes off shift she struts her stuff on the dance floor. Honey also finds time to teach hip-hop dance classes at the local center. A toadie working for big name video director Michael Ellis (David Moscow) records her on the dance floor and he brings her in to save the day on a video shoot. The next thing we know Honey is not just dancing, she's doing choreography. Her big dream is not to be the next Paula Abdul, but to open up a real dance studio for the kids in the hood. Ellis derails Honey's plains, but the girl has got spunk, and, as everybody who has seen the ads for this movie knows, a pretty impressive guardian angel. The problem with the story is the director character of Michael Ellis. His idea of directing is a joke and I find it hard to believe that he is fooling every single one of these artists, except for the fact the story got written that way. But none of that would have mattered if the dancing had been presented a lot better.

The character of Honey has lots of minor interpersonal problems that provide some breadth but not true depth of character, such as getting successful while staying tight with her best girl Gina (Joy Bryant), putting up with all the negative vibes from her mother (Lonette McKee), hooking up with Chaz (Mekhi Phifer) the barber, and keeping an eye out for brothers Benny (Lil' Romeo) and Raymond (Zachary Williams), who are a couple of at risk kids in the neighborhood. For those who showed up to see what Jessica Alba is like without the barcode they will see some strong similarities with Max from "Dark Angel" in that Alba's best moments are when she is acting the big sister. Whether dealing with escapees from Manticore or the kids in the hood, she connects with them. Her best scenes are with the kids and her dance class.

The fault with this movie is not with the cast or even with the writers, the latter being excused because if you want to make a good dance movie the story is not as important as the actual dancing, so you if you want to go back and pull out the Andy and Judy bit about the kids putting on a show, that is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem with "Honey" is that the dancing is not as great as it should be. Honey is involved in a bunch of music videos, all of which involve real hip hop stars including Tweet, Ginuwine, Shawn Desman, Jadakiss & Sheek, Rodney Jerkins, and Silkk. But the presentation of the dancing almost always is less than inspiring. The initial scenes of Honey in the club set up things nicely, but director Bille Woodruff, a popular video director, must have really been aware that this was a big screen motion picture because there are only bits and pieces of flair for most of the movie. The fault is not with the choreography of Luther A. Brown and Laurie Ann Gibson, but with the way Woodruff is presenting things. We never seem to be getting an entire dance routine, just bits and pieces. The best set piece is probably the one with Ginuwine and the kids, but all we get is part of a rehearsal and the camera angles and cuts do little to enhance our enjoyment of the routine.

Another part of the problem is that halfway through the film, Alba pretty much stops dancing as she turns into a choreographer. A great dance movie is predicated on the star doing the dancing, whether we are talking Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly or John Travolta and Patrick Swayze. Jennifer Beals can fool us with a body double, but that is not going to work twice, as Julia Stiles discovered. The proof of the pudding here is in the final credits, where we get to see a complete music video ("directed" by "Honey Daniels") and we are all sitting in the theater saying, "Yeah, we wanted to see more stuff like that!" A lot of people are going to enjoy this film, but most of those people are going to know that this could have been a lot better and that the fault here is not that of Alba but of Woodruff. How ironic that the credits for this film show us how what had been good could have been great.