Everybody's kung-fu dancing

While the presence of 17-story karaoke palaces scattered throughout Taipei suggests that Taiwan is a place dominated by the raucous recreational singer, director Chi Y. Lee does his best to debunk this myth in his spirited youth dance flick, Chocolate Rap. Following preternaturally gifted breaker Chocolate on his path to fame, stardom and personal fulfillment, Chocolate Rap makes a well-attempted bid at creating a Taiwanese street dance film in the tradition of 2004's You Got Served. 

Filled with jaw-dropping moves and muscle-bound b-boys, Chocolate Rap starts out strong. Street dancers Chocolate (Chen Hsin-hung) and Pachinko (Huang Po-Ching) unite under a banner of killer moves and self-expression, with just the right amount of parental disdain to preserve the rebellious excitement in their breaking. Played by professional breakers chosen from a field of 300 to 400 dancers, Chen and Huang shine with honesty in their roles, and dominate the screen while dancing.  

When concert pianist Ally (Megan Lai) comes into the picture, however, the film starts to split apart. Lee attempts to develop and complicate Ally's character by repeatedly shooting her on the beach, ostensibly as a Kaohsiung surfer girl.  Unfortunately, Lai never has her Blue Crush moment, and the viewer is left wondering at the purpose of Lee's meandering, albeit pleasant, forays to the beach. 

Similarly underdeveloped is Chocolate's crew. With obvious screen presence and classic names like "Big Mouth" and "Lion Head," Choco's fellow breakers have the potential to be some of the most engaging bits in the film. However, apart from one highly entertaining moment involving a shiny blue cummerbund, hyper-groomed ballroom dancers and a dance-off, Choco's crew is left to dance outside of the fray.

Most disappointing is the flat performance of Chocolate's student-turned-competitor, King Kong (Tong Jian-Kong). Every hero needs his nemesis, and the greater the nemesis, the greater the battle. However, Tong seems too preternaturally cool to be believable as a nerdy wannabe break dancer to Chocolate's silent shifu. Even when given the chance to show off his real moves, King Kong never scales the heights of dramatic villainy necessary for the type of giddy good-and-evil types teen movies can excel at creating.

Chocolate Rap's central weakness is that the film veers too far away from the heart of its material -- breaking. The romance between Ally and Chocolate's manager Pachinko distracts from the central plotline of Chocolate's pursuit of dancing with the approval of his stern father, Icecube Pop (Akio Chen). After Chocolate is injured in a car accident, setting the scene for an impending triumphant recovery, the film returns to its dance origins only after what feels like a period of purgatory in a 17-story karaoke parlor.

When the renewed breaker returns to his craft following a stint in his father's footsteps as a commercial ice carver, Chocolate begins to incorporate the mindfulness and moves of the Chinese martial art, Taiji Chuan, into his dancing. In interviews, Lee has suggested his use of Chinese martial arts as breaking back to the influence of Chinese martial arts cinema of the 1960s and 1970s on the New York street culture where break dancing began. Lee's Chinese reference point offers an intriguing counterpoint to the argument that Chocolate Rap is merely a Taiwanese take on an American breaking film, though fans of the latter will certainly enjoy the former.

Unfortunately, while the film's dancing is consistently energetic and exciting, the soundtrack never quite comes together.  Lee's attempt at contrasting Ally's Bach with Choco's hip-hop is distracting. Rather than creating a dynamic counterpoint of musical styles, the combination of street and classical music never quite builds the coursing auditory momentum one expects from even the most cursory of hip-hop narratives. MC Hotdog, one of Taiwan's most famous hip-hop artists, was responsible for the Chocolate Rap's street sound, but the film's visual and auditory sensations never completely coalesce into a seamless whole. 

An innovative, intrinsically driven twist to the "final dance-off" does offer some modification to well-trod genre material, and a further, if underdeveloped, link to the earlier martial arts connections alluded to by Lee. Chocolate Rap's final,
simple, impeccably shot seaside moments showcase the talent and dynamism of Taiwanese breakers and succeed in overshadowing consistencies of many of the film's earlier moments. Lee's work, while not offering quite the same energy or musical appeal as earlier international hip-hop films, does brings new youth-oriented material to the Taiwanese market. Chocolate Rap attempts to link the roots of international youth culture to the Chinese experience, and creates a largely refreshing new work in the process.