Honey, if you believed the trailers, was supposed to be this generations Flashdance. Another story of a young dancer who overcame the odds to make good on her dreams and becomes a success. Except in Flashdance Jennifer Beals’ character wants to be a ballet dancer at a prestigious dance academy while Jessica Alba’s character in Honey only dreams of becoming a dancer in hip hop videos. And that I’m sad to say is where the comparisons end.

Billie Woodruff, a video director who has done work for everyone from Jay-Z to R-Kelley, makes his feature length theatrical debut with Honey. Somewhere along the way however someone forgot to tell him that it was a movie he was making not an extended music video.

Honey tells the story of Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba) a middle class girl who teaches hip hop dance to under privileged kids and young adults at the community center her mother (Lonetta McKee) runs. Her dream is to dance in music videos. She gets this chance when the reigning king of music video directors, Michael Ellis (David Moscow) discovers her and doesn’t want her to just dance in his videos but choreograph them as well. Talk about luck. Of course things aren’t that easy and Honey soon learns that nothing in this world is free.

We then learn that Honey is really the video girl with the heart of gold and she proceeds to use her new found insight on the world and her talents to help the underprivileged kids in her neighborhood.

I guess my biggest problem with this movie, outside of being an extended after school break special, and free promotion for a number of artists (most of whom seem to be produced by Missy who makes an extended cameo in the film) is that it treats the audience like we’re a bunch of naïve, simpletons who will just eat up a contrived improbable tale full of stereotypes and lacking in any originality. I mean Alonzo Brown and Kate Watson packed Honey with every stale plot device, stereotype and sob tale you could think of. Instead of being a fun, perhaps clichéd, underdog tale ala Flashdance, you instead end up with a dumb, clichéd hood tale that could have been written by any teenager who regularly watches MTV, BET and perhaps an episode or two of Maury Povich or Ricki Lake.

The only saving grace of Honey is Mekhi Phifer. Outside of being a nice piece of eye candy he manages to make his role as Chaz, neighborhood barber and mentor, compelling and interesting which is pretty impressive considering the dialogue and the rest of the script he was given to work with. All in all…stay away. Honey isn’t worth your time or money. It’s not funny, it’s corny and besides I’ve seen better after school break specials, they’re shorter and while still corny you might actual come away having learned something.

T.S. Johnson is a freelance writer and owner of PrologueReviews.com. Visit http://www.prologuezine.com for all of your writing needs or http://www.prologuereviews.com to have your music, movie or book reviewed.

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