Butt News Movie Club #27: Center Stage

I Got Kicked Out of College for Being Fat, but At Least I Got This Infected Toe!

[SELF-PROMOTION POWER MINUTE:

1. Have you listened and subscribed to my WONDERFUL comedy/opinion/friendship podcast, Text Me Back, that I make with my BFF Meagan Hatcher-Mays, who is a LAWYER? It is so funny! Come listen to it and let’s be a community with inside jokes!

2. The movie I co-wrote, Thin Skin, which is about the time that my husband’s father crushed his dreams and then his skin fell off, is FINALLY out on Blu-Ray and VOD! You can buy a hard copy or stream it at that link. Please please please please please watch it and leave us a good review! Ratings and reviews help a tiny indie film like this sooooooooo much. I love you!

As always, if you enjoy the Butt News, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Especially if you are a famous ballerino who has his own motorcycle and is also a rich widow’s toyboy!]

The other day I asked you krazy kids to nominate movies for this week’s Butt News on Instagram and then upvote your favorites and I solemnly swore to abide by the winner. Said winner, by an absolute assload, was Y2K ballerina movie Center Stage, beating the second place nominee (Return To Oz, which I DESPERATELY wanted to do instead, but I am a rule-follower and I respect a promise!) by literally hundreds and hundreds of votes. Okay, weirdos!! Y’all are obsessed!

I had never seen Center Stage before, despite being pretty much primo age-a-rino for it (18 in the year 2000), nor had I ever had much curiosity about it for the following reasons:

1. seemed boring

2. i was long ago rejected by the world of dance for being a lumbering sequoia of a girl

3. no stars unless you count Peter Gallagher, whompst the female loins do not learn to appreciate until age 37 (Zoe Saldana was not famous yet!!!)

But unto the breach I plunged, hoping for the best.

We open at a small-town dance studio in Buttville, USA, where scouts from the American Ballet Academy National Audition Tour are combing the nation for the bendiest and most good-footed teenage ballet dancers (ballereenagers!!!) to attend their elite dance college in Noo York Cittay. The parents gossip on the sidelines: How many of their ballereenagers will be kidnapped and forced to ruin their toes to feed the sleepless twin demigods of Lincoln Center (Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows)? No more than 12… out of the whole planet. Wow!!!!!!!! A different kind of Hunger Games!

Two judges appraise a blonde girl named Jody, who will soon become our protagonist.

Female Judge: “Not enough turn out. Bad feet.”

Male Judge (hornily): “But look at her.”

THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO WORK.

Jody gets accepted on the spot (don’t you have to appraise every other teenager on the planet before you decide??), but Jody’s parents are not even proud of her! They don’t want her to go to ballet college; they want her to go to brain college. Jody explains that the ABA feeds directly into a professional ballet company, which is her dream, and her parents say wellllllll there’s no guarantee she’ll even get into the company and then she will be an uneducated crone with ruined toes and no job. Wow, you guys are the worst! Is this ballerina dream a surprise to you? Surely you noticed Jody going to the ballet studio for nine hours a day for the past 15 years?????????

Jody is oddly unfazed—to a borderline tranquilized degree—by her parents’ complete lack of excitement/support/pride re: their child being declared one of the 12 most ballingest and horny-making ballerinas on the entire earth. She simply does not notice and is just like “bye I am go to New York now” and forgets she even has a family, a reaction which, while weird, is in keeping with the emotional landscape of the rest of this movie, a phantasmagoria of spinning automatons made BY ALIENS FOR ALIENS.

Zoe Saldana has also been accepted into the ballet academy, but, she tells her friends, whatever, maybe she will just get great big implanted knockers and work at Hooters instead. It is NEVER explained/earned/justified why Zoe Saldana has this shitty attitude toward the ballet school, which she worked her ass off to get into and yet continues to violently resent until literally the last 30 seconds of the movie. Again, as I said to Jody’s parents, presumably you trained incredibly hard for this your entire lifetime???? WHY ARE YOU MAD? The normal screenplay reason for something like this would be because her mom tragically died while she was at her audition (CHOO CHOO), or she has been the victim of racism by the ballet elites (almost certainly true, but never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever mentioned or depicted), or she got to ballet school and on the first day she realized that the company director is the man who, 25 years ago, ran her beloved sweetheart off the road in an illegal street race and exploded him and now she has to take dancing tips from this guy?? I don’t think so!

On the first day of school, Jody meets a blonde motorcycle hunk outside Lincoln Center and they make sex eyes at each other until she passes out because he’s THEE COOPER NIELSEN, the most famous bad-boy man-ballerina in town.

We pan up the side of the school building and we see the strings rehearsing their little ditties in one room and then directly above them the ballet dancers are in class clomping up and down on the floor as hard as they can. Petition to the Dean: can we put the dance studios on the ground floor and the baby-soft violin practice upstairs??Do I have to do everything around here??????

Jody heads to her dorm and meets her new roommates, Zoe Saldana and Maureen. For some reason as soon as Maureen steps in to the room Zoe and Jody hate her and want to kill her!!! It’s like when my dog gets sniffed by an un-neutered male dog at the dog park and turns into Cerberus, the Hound of Hades!

Zoe is smoking a cigarette and Maureen says “What are you doing?” and Zoe goes, “I’m knitting a sweater.” While I do think it should be illegal to criticize Zoe Saldana, you are smoking INDOORS at a COLLEGE FOR LEAPING. It’s kind of a normal question!

They meet a few other new students: Erik, who loves Oprah; Charlie, who is not gay; and Sergei, who is Russian and has a girlfriend allegedly. Sergei confirms that Maureen is a “big time bitch,” which, again, is NOT EARNED IMO! Then we go straight into the fucked-up toe montage where everybody does their weird shoe stuff. No offense, but I’d rather watch a guy get his head chopped off than look at people’s blistered and broken dancing toes!

Then it’s SANDY COHEN TIME! In this house we love a Peter Gallagher joint! Peter Gallagher is the company director and he immediately goes ahead and takes his students down a peg. He says they have to work as hard as they can to become the best dancers they can possibly be, and even then most of them won’t get into the company anyway because he only has room for three boys and three girls.

Zoe comes in late and then she is IMPUDENT at Peter Gallagher, OF COURSE.

Peter Gallagher: “So glad you could fit us into your busy schedule.”

Zoe: “Oh, no sweat.”

Now they all do their little squats while the teacher lady, Juliette, walks around and criticizes them. Jody needs to concentrate on her turn-out, from the hip. Zoe has violated the dress code (black leotard, pink tights) by wearing a weird green turtleneck (????) and her hair is on her face and she has a weird scarf tied around her hips and she’s chewing gum. She is ENRAGED about the dress code, even though it’s way cuter than her dumb outfit. Agaaaaain, why ARE you there?? If you hate it so much?

Juliette has Maureen demonstrate how not to have dead chicken wings for arms, and it’s not Maureen’s fault that she has alive chicken wings for arms and she is good at ballet! In fact, it turns out to be her curse!!

Jody fucks up and collides with a girl who looks just like her and one of the teachers whispers, “Who let that disaster in here?” to another teacher and the answer is SOME HORNY MAN!

The girls go and watch the boys practice and a girl named Emily says “fresh meat,” which, when I am Madame President, will be the first thing to go.

Then a woman walks by wearing a farmer’s hat and it’s Kathleen, the prima ballerina of the company and Peter Gallagher’s wife and Cooper Nielsen’s EX-GIRLFRIEND! Most of the girls are star-struck but Zoe says, “I think she looks like a gerbil.” Probably because of her fur and her long teeth.

Someone explains that when Kathleen dumped Cooper for Peter Gallagher, Cooper freaked out and called her a slut in front of the entire company and then ran off to London to CRY. And now that he’s back, “he hasn’t spoken to ANYONE.” Jody’s like, “he talked to me,” tee hee.

Maureen has salad with her mom (the frumpy yet demonic secretary in Devil’s Advocate btw!!!) in the cafeteria and Emily walks by looking for fresh meat no doubt. Maureen’s mom points out that Emily, an elite ballerina, is huge and wide and her pas de deux partner is “going to need a crane to lift her.” Cool, we love.

Then they go watch the ballet company perform, starring Kathleen and Cooper I think? I can’t tell anyone in this movie apart and I am a super-recognizer!

Question: Is ballet good? It feels like math meets jumping. I mean, look, I can’t do that. It’s an aesthetic thumbs-up. But why is it so LONG?

On stage, toxic exes Cooper and Kathleen KISS as Romeo and Juliet. Wait, they make out in ballet??????????? Do they fuck?!??!?!? I take back my previous paragraph!!!!!!

Zoe cries from the beauty of ballet and then they have to sell Kathleen’s smelly old bloody shoes at the gala. Peter Gallagher comes up to Cooper and is like, “there’s a woman here whose husband just died and left her 200 million dollars and she adores you,” implying that it’s part of Cooper’s job to give carnal pleasures to this old widow to keep the ballet company afloat. Cooper is ON BOARD. He meets the lady, named Joan, and kisses her hand erotically. Jody spies this and goes feral with jealousy!

She body-slams the rich lady to interrupt her flirting with Cooper, with whom Jody once exchanged six words next to a parking meter. That is psychopath behavior!!!!!

But then Peter Gallagher INTRODUCES HER proudly???? He’s like, “this is one of our students!” After she broke all this major donor’s ribs out of JEALOUSY? But Peter Gallagher forgot Jody’s name (so???????? you don’t know him!) and then Cooper is like, “don’t worry, JODY SAWYER, I’ll always remember your name!” Sexual wink. And Jody’s like wow that’s the man for me. He remembers my name.

Then Cooper KISSES KATHLEEN (HIS EX WHO IS MARRIED TO HIS BOSS) ON THE NECK OUT OF NOWHERE and it’s sooooooo inappropriate! Everything is aliens!!!!!!!

Some of students sneak into the stage of Lincoln Center or wherever the ballet was and they try out their little dances. Somehow Oprah manages to pick Emily up even though he is not a crane! Who knew?

Meanwhile, Cooper is whining at Kathleen about “not being friends anymore” with the vibe of someone who’s about to go down to Tosche to pick up some power converters. She’s like I’M HAPPILY WITH PETER GALLAGHER NOW and he’s like if that’s true then why did we dance better than we ever have tonight? And she’s like THAT WAS ACTING! And… respectfully… what do you guys know about acting?

B-)

When it’s finally time to go home, Maureen says she didn’t like the slave labor part of the gala where they were forced to sell dirty shoes. A waiter who was flirting with her earlier, whose name is Jim Gordon, follows them outside with a tray of fruit tarts. Emily takes a fruit tart and Maureen says, “they’re practically all fat, Emily.” I’m not turning on you yet, Maureen, because it’s hard to have a body and you could use some allies right now, but LEAVE EMILY ALONE!

Jim Gordon says he told his mom that New York is devoid of any true natural beauty but now that he’s met Maureen he knows that’s not true. Bro, why did you say that to your mom?? What question did she ask you to prompt that answer? Is your mom a riddling sphinx who told you you must find the one true beauty of New York City or else be turned to stone? Jim demands Maureen’s last name.

“Cummings, her last name is Cummings!!” – Emily, spraying globs of pure fat

Now it’s practice again. Zoe is late again. Jody sucks. Maureen is perfect.

You know, it’s actually not cute to put your feet like that. That’s how the Grinch stands.

And then his toe grew three sizes that day! Because it was infected.

The teacher gives them some dancing tip that I didn’t write down and is like, “Feel the the difference?” and Zoe goes, “Felt like the same old shit to me,” and it’s just not necessary for the vibe to be this stinky, Zoe!!!

Jody is not doing well in class. The teacher tells Emily to go see the nutritionist because of her massive ass. Jody stays up late practicing toe walking alone. Didn’t she know that toe walking was gonna be a part of this? HAS JODY NOT DONE BALLET BEFORE?? The teacher is telling Jody to stop sucking again and Zoe uses her stinky ‘tude for good instead of evil: “JESUS, SHE HEARD YOU, EVERYONE CAN SEE SHE’S WORKING HER ASS OFF!”

Meanwhile, Jim Gordon has been calling the office of the ballet school “NONSTOP” trying to find Maureen (creepy!!!).

Jody goes into the office to get some feedback from Peter Gallagher.

PG: “You’re not improving.”

Jody: “I can work harder.”

Peter Gallagher is like eh, it’s not gonna help, babe. Jody is not very turned out and she doesn’t have great feet and while she’s very pretty she doesn’t have the ideal body type. Jody counters that Margo Fontaine didn’t have great feet, which is verbatim what I’m going to say the next time someone criticizes me.

Peter Gallagher says he simply cannot cast Jody in the big ballet workshop where all the big ballet companies are gonna come, which is the only way she could ever get a job. He’s not kicking her out of school (WHY DID YOU LET HER IN?) but he just wants her to really think if this is the right place for her.

Zoe: “What a prick.”

Jody: “He was nice about it.”

Zoe (gravely disappointed with the white moderate): “Yeah, but being nice when you say something pricky is even prickier.”

You tell ‘em, Zoe!! Shallow understanding from people of good will IS more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will, and lukewarm acceptance IS much more bewildering than outright rejection!!!!!

Then Maureen is like maybe Peter Gallagher is right, which, lol, privately I agree, Maureen, but read the room! Maureen tells Jody that she’s really smart and she still has time to apply for regular college, which Jody and Zoe find VERY offensive.

Jody: “I don’t want to go to college; I want to dance!”

Zoe: “Jesus, what, you went to a special bitch academy or something?”

Wow, okay, I’m pitching Special Bitch Academy to Netflix this instant.

Zoe tells Maureen that Jody wouldn’t be there if the people didn’t see something in her at her audition. (Yeah, that one horny judge saw his penis in her!!)

Jody sighs and says to Zoe, “Why can’t I have your feet?”

1. Could you guys explain what it means to have good feet and why it matters? I mean, at this point I’ve looked it up (it means your foot is curved like a banana), but would it kill you to do one second of exposition in your movie which is ABOUT BAD FEET?

2. You know what would be great is if the movie stopped right here and took a turn where it became like Get Out except it’s white ballerinas stealing Black ballerinas’ feet. Would watch!

Zoe says that instead of Jody stealing her feet, they’re gonna go out dancing for FUN. Jody has never heard of this. JIM GORDON IS WAITING OUTSIDE when Maureen and Emily and the other blonde girl come out, and he asks if Maureen is dating Cooper Nielsen and she’s like, “what do you know about Cooper Nielsen?” and he goes I’VE BEEN DOING MY BALLET RESEARCH.

YOU’VE BEEN WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Stranger danger! Clunk one time for the Killer!

You know who’s the safest from Jim Gordon? Emily, because she’s too heavy to pick up and carry away. Unless he has a crane…

Jim Gordon says he’s pre-med at Columbia and he has impeccable hygiene (so not a crane operator—phew). He gives Maureen his number. She explains that she has strict priorities because she’s only allowed to be a dancer for ten years so she has no time for Jim’s Gordon. He says he’s only asking for one date, so she agrees.

The rest of them go dancing at a bar and look at this place!

Yeah right! There’s no bar in New York that has the perfect number of people in it! It’s either dystopian-empty or dystopian-crowded!

Charlie and Jody do salsa dance. Zoe and Oprah do salsa dance. Sergei tries to chat up some hotties but they laugh at him for being a ballerino.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Maureen has never been bowling before. Jim Gordon is showing her the lives of the simple folk, and she’s loving it! She wants to bowl with common people! Jim Gordon is telling a story about a mouse fucking an elephant and Maureen takes her first bite of pizza ever and now she is PIZZA MONSTER. PIZZA PIZZA PIZZA! Uh oh!

Back at the club, Sergei has lost his mojo. He can’t even talk to a MILF! The MILF asks what he’s doing in New York and he lies and says “mafia.” Now they do an EROTIC DANCE.

I wish this scene went on a little longer.

Now Maureen eats ice cream with Jim. She’s a pizza maniac AND a chocoholic! She gets a little ice cream on her chin so he slurps it off with a kiss. Like, STOP, that’s mine!!!!!

Jody and Charlie walk romantically and agree that they’re both sweet and sweaty and they want to lick each other’s sweat.

Back at home, Maureen has to do bulimia because she ate food. See? See why we don’t be mean to Maureen???

:(

Now everyone is hungover at practice. They get in trouble and they have to squeegee all the dance studios. Everyone razzes Sergei for grinding on the MILF and they say they’re going to tell his girlfriend Golina because a girl’s got a right to know what kind of hound she’s saving herself for! This leads into a soapy water fight, even though THEY’RE THE ONES THAT HAVE TO CLEAN ALL THAT UP!

Maureen tries telling the elephant/mouse-fucking joke to her mom, and, like, you don’t need to tell the elephant/mouse-fucking joke to your mom. Instead, you need to have a serious conversation about who cuts her hair.

Mom says that Charlie should be Maureen’s partner in the pas de deux class.

Mom: “Having a bad pas de deux partner is like having a bad tennis partner.”

Maureen: “I wouldn’t know—I’ve never played tennis.”

Mom does not pick up on the subtext. Maureen finishes the joke and her mom does not laugh at all. See? It wasn’t worth it.

Back at dance school, Cooper and Peter Gallagher are fighting. Cooper says Gallagher is threatened by him—he wants to choreograph for the company but Gallagher is afraid of his ideas because he’s TOO INNOVATIVE! Gallagher is like, I’m not threatened by you—“I GOT THE GIRL,” meaning Kathleen. Sir, you’re a grown man!

Jody goes to a jazz dance class where everyone is gay and kissing. Whaaaaaat, Cooper is there too! He’s interested in the rhythms of the streets! They do very sexual thrusting dancing.

Dare I say, Cooper has a real Bill Nye-esque bone structure.

Hahahahahahahahah this dance is so stupid. It’s stupider than the dancing in Showgirls!

After class, Cooper asks Jody if he can take her out for dessert on his hog. They go back to his apartment and he just starts rummaging around in his cupboards, saying he thought he had some cookies somewhere, but he DOESN’T, he just has some WINE.

Oh boy.

FIRST OF ALL.

Even if you had cookies, cookies are not “dessert.” A cookie is only a dessert if it’s pizza-size, molten hot in a cast iron skillet, with ice cream AND whipped cream and a chopped up Heath bar on there. (In the 90s you could make anything into a pizza!)

Second of all, if a guy told me he was taking me out for dessert and then he did this????? DEATH PENALTY.

Cooper tells Jody that Peter Gallagher is stupid and actually she is a good dancer with good feet. Don’t lie!!! They kiss while Mandy Moore sings “I Wanna Be With You,” an under-appreciated classic! They have sex.

Back at school, it’s time to finalize casting for the big workshop, in which Peter Gallagher has begrudgingly agreed to let Cooper make his choreographical debut. Man, if people find out she bang-a-ranged Cooper and then she gets cast in his number they’re surely going to accuse them both of CORRUPTION! Undoubtedly that will be the driving conflict comprising the third act of the film!

Right, guys?

… guys?

Maureen’s mom is there to watch the auditions. The teacher says that Maureen is good but she needs more heart. But she’s never been allowed to have a heart!!!!!!

The cast list gets posted, and Jody did indeed get cast in Cooper’s dance. She gives him some dessert in a box, “so you’ll have some for next time,” IN FRONT OF KATHLEEN. Ma’am, have some discretion! You’re gonna get everyone fired!

Oh, or…

No one ever mentions it at all, not once??

Zoe goes to visit Oprah to say congratulations on getting cast as one of the leads in Cooper’s workshop performance. Oprah says that Cooper has some dumb theory about making ballet that’s “for the people,” and if it’s a white dude saying that in the year 2000 you KNOW what he means (#urban #flava)!

Oprah: “I like ballet because it has nothing to do with the people. Give me tiaras and boys in tights.”

MORE OPRAH IN THE INEVITABLE REBOOT.

Zoe says she got cast in the corps in Peter Gallagher’s number, which means she’ll be in the back and no one will see her and she’ll never get a job. But she says she doesn’t care, whatever. Then they snuggle and it’s cute. We love platonic intimacy!

The dancers practice Peter Gallagher’s very traditional ballet to almost the exact chord sequence from Electro City.

Meanwhile, Cooper is using this STUDENT WORKSHOP PRODUCTION to enact psychosexual revenge upon everyone who has ever wronged him, by making his piece a thinly veiled allegory concerning an innocent ballerina, a motorcycle bad boy, and a stupid shitty idiot ugly company director trapped in a love triangle. Speaking of fake musicals in beloved comedy properties that I’d rather be watching instead of this, it’s giving Nightman Cometh!

The “plot” of Cooper’s number is that Jody’s a ballerina and she’s in love with Oprah, the mysterious and alluring rebel, and Charlie is the guy who runs the ballet company who is in love with Jody. Subtle! They got the janitor to play drums. Now they just sort of like ad-lib a dance??????? Sorry, didn’t you BEG TO BE HIRED TO CHOREOGRAPH?

Juliette asks Zoe to stay after rehearsal to talk shit about how annoying Peter Gallagher is, but says, “you’ll never find any company director who isn’t like that.” Wow, sounds like your industry sucks! Also, though… is he even bad? Has he done anything bad or mean? Except tell under-performing students that this might not be a good fit for them, which is arguably his job?? Juliette advises Zoe that, “the unwise dancers blame him… the smart ones know where to look when things get rough.” It isn’t at the boss. It’s at the BARRE.

Juliette: “If you come back here [gestures to barre], you’ll be home.”

Unless you’re fat, in which case you have no place here. Your home is like a KFC or something.

They have a nice moment but then Zoe goes home and bitches to Jody about how Juliette is “nosy”?? Come on!

Jody invites Maureen and Jim to come hang out with them for Oprah’s birthday, and Maureen’s mom espies her kissing Jim because she is creepy-crawling around Lincoln Center like a spider! They take a limo to the Statue of Liberty and Jody practices ballet on the ferry because dancing is a disease for her and she cannot have fun. Charlie says Jody needs to take some time away from dancing and go on a date with him, but she says she’s kind of seeing someone (NO YOU’RE NOT) and he’s a pouty worm about it.

Jim goes looking for Maureen and finds her puking in the boat bathroom but she says she’s just seasick.

At rehearsal, Cooper says that their dance is about sex and Oprah needs to feel it and be right up against Jody with his weenis. Cooper asks Charlie what he think about this move for the end of the pas de trois, and Charlie says sure but what if it was like this??

Now they have a vicious DANCE DUEL because Charlie can sense that Cooper is the one who is banging Jody.

“How about THAT?”

“Why don’t you try THIS?”

Hey, Cooper, again, aren’t you being PAID to choreograph this???????

After rehearsal, Jody goes to Lincoln Center to watch “her boyfriend” Cooper dance a lil Soulja Boy ballet with Kathleen. They just let her walk backstage and stand on the side????? You’re in the way! MOVE!

Cooper comes off stage MID-DANCE and is like what on earth are you doing here and she says I’M SURPRISING YOU and he is not excited and I can’t say I blame him. He’s at work! What is Cooper gonna do with a gun rack?? Get the net!

Maureen’s mom runs into Juliette, who tells her that Maureen has lost focus.

Joan, the rich widow from the gala, shows up to watch Cooper’s rehearsal. She says there’s nothing weird going on—“He’s being nice to a tired old lady.” YEAH SURE. Everyone hates being in Cooper’s ballet because he keeps changing his mind and he has NOTHING CHOREOGRAPHED. Jody is wearing a camisole with a kangaroo pocket, a monstrosity that even Gen Z refuses to touch.

Cooper: “It’s not that complicated. I want what I say I want when I say I want it. You got a problem with that?”

Jody (who is mad that he didn’t love her surprise-bothering-him-at-work): “Yeah, maybe I do. What about what I want?”

Cooper: “I don’t give a SHIT what you want.”

He does mean-whisper in front of everyone and he’s like stfu and do your JOB but in her defense how is she supposed to memorize a dance that doesn’t exist???? Jody storms out and Joan is like “DuhRAMMAAAA!!!” She loves it. It’s not so bad being a meddling widow!

Charlie chases after Jody because he is Good Guy.

Jody: “How a dancer feels doesn’t matter to a choreographer.”

Charlie: “No, but how a woman feels should matter to the guy she’s seeing.”

Jody says she’s too splotchy to go back to rehearsal and Charlie says she should “use it… whatever you feel, just dance it.” Use your splotches! She goes back in there and she’s like SPLOOOOOOTCH and everyone is like WOW.

This is a bad dance, hahaha. It’s as bad as the Julia Stiles dance, except it’s more boring! However, I’m proud of a bunch of dancers for making a movie! Acting is hard!

Maureen’s mom comes to yell at her about how Juliette said she’s doing poorly, and mom knows it’s all Jim Gordon’s penis’s fault. Then, in rehearsal, Peter Gallagher tells Maureen that she’s making the dancing look like work. THEN he takes Emily to his office and kicks her out for being more-to-love!

Have you ever seen anyone so fat??????????

Emily: “He told me that I don’t take enough pride in my body.”

Okay, that is kind of rude. But is it villain-level bad?? Are we sure? Or is it basic ballet culture, especially 24 years ago?

Jim is awakened to the sound of barfing and he tells Maureen that as a medical student he knows that bulimia is bad for you: “I know that no goal is worth making yourself sick.” She’s like well MAYBE MY GOAL IS HARDER THAN YOURS. Lol, he’s going to medical school! And he can carry two big trays of fruit tarts at once!

Maureen says that she’s making sacrifices for what she wants and Jim says that a girl who throws up everything she eats can’t really be in tune with her wants and needs. She says she’s the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy and who the hell is he? NOBODY!

Idk, just a half-sphinx FUTURE DOCTOR.

Juliette catches Zoe dancing alone at night and offers to give her some one-on-one late night coaching, which is NOT sexual, unfortunately.

At rehearsal, Oprah falls down and hurts his ankle, but Cooper says Andre the understudy isn’t good enough to replace him! (WHY DID YOU PICK HIM AS UNDERSTUDY THEN?) Cooper says there’s only one option: he must take on the role himself even though he is not a student and this is a showcase for students to be recruited by professional ballet companies and Cooper is already a lead dancer at a professional ballet company. But he doesn’t care!

Is it homophobic to ask why you wouldn’t cast Oprah as the company director and Charlie as the motorcycle hunk, if you really wanted to amp up the sexual chemistry between Jody and the hunk? Unless you were deliberately setting up a situation later where YOU SPECIFICALLY would get to play the motorcycle hunk, in which case where was Cooper when Oprah hurt his ankle????

Maureen confides to Jim that when Oprah fell down her first thought was that she wished it was her, and she knows that’s not a normal reaction. So maybe there’s something wrong with her relationship with dance???? Yeah, maybe!

Can I say that aside from the fat-shaming, I don’t really think this school is that abusive and I don’t understand why all these kids are losing their minds??

They all get ready backstage before the show.

Okay, HOT FEMALE MAESTRO!

Places!

Cooper finds Jody in the stairwell and says he really needs her to do a good job. Yeah, obviously! I hate him. He touches her face intimately! Gross!

Charlie: “Listen, forget him. Just dance it like you feel it.”

I’m sorry, so there’s just NO FOLLOW-UP about Jody being NOT GOOD ENOUGH AT DANCING TO EVEN BE CAST IN THE WORKSHOP AT ALL, which is the plot of the WHOLE FIRST HALF OF THE MOVIE, but then she FUCKS THE CHOREOGRAPHER and immediately gets cast as the STAR OF THE WORKSHOP!??!?!?!? IT’S LITERALLY NEVER EVEN BROUGHT UP ONCE? IN THIS VIPER’S NEST WHERE EVERYONE IS COMPETING FOR THREE JOBS???? RUFKM?

Now it’s time for Maureen’s big moment as the lead in Peter Gallagher’s ballet. Sergei—the other lead—looks up and is surprised at who’s coming on stage. Is it the MILF??

No! it’s Zoe!!! Maureen quit and gave her part to Zoe! Is that how it works???? Does Zoe know the part!!??!?!?!

Maureen’s mom is NOT HAPPY. Sorry, mom, Maureen is busy following her dreams of blowing a cater waiter!

Someone looking at the program: “It says right here—Maureen Cummings!”

Yeah, she is!!!!!!!!!!

Maureen’s mom confronts her in the lobby and says, “WHY THE HELL IS THAT TRASH OUT THERE DANCING YOUR PART?” which, death penalty part deux. Maureen says that she doesn’t want to be a ballet dancer and she only tried so hard because it was her mom’s dream blah blah blah you know the drill.

Mom: “I know what regret feels like, and I don’t want that for you.”

Maureen: “That’s what ballet would be for me… I’m not you, mom. You didn’t have the feet. I don’t have the heart.”

Wowwww, you GOTTA THROW HER FEET IN HER FUCKIN FACE! Actually, she deserves it! Maureen’s bulimia is now cured.

Okay, let’s see Cooper’s stupid dance. This final number is deranged, unsettling, ghoulish, clearly the motivating factor in Center Stage’s inexplicable (to me) cult status—a true arcane horror that you really must experience for yourself:

However I will also describe it. Charlie is playing the company director, doing BORING old TRADITIONAL BALLET with his FEET.

And then…

Cooper

RIDES

ON

STAGE

ON

HIS

MOTORCYCLE.

Vrooooooooom!!! This ain’t your widowed-but-horny major donor’s ballet performance!!!!!! They dance to Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel,” thus finally bringing ballet into the future by using a song that’s 13 years old.

Jody takes her hair down and they ride away on the motorcycle to a simulacrum of Cooper’s apartment. SORRY, THIS IS A PART OF THE BALLET?? THEY RIDE THEIR MOTORCYCLE TO BED AND THEN HAVE SEX!??!?!?!?!

Next (we are STILL IN THE DANCE), Jody comes to class late because she was up all night riding the hog and she gets disciplined by Charlie. But then Cooper shows up and FIGHTS CHARLIE! Now Jody and Charlie dance to a slow jam, and let me tell you—the chemistry is popping off. Oh no but then Cooper steals her away! Now all three of them dance together! They pick her up and throw her back and forth like a hacky sack!

When Cooper sees Charlie’s sick moves in the dance-off he realizes he’s lost Jody (in real life). He looks soooooo sad. BUT YOU DIDN’T WANT TO DATE HER. Then somehow there’s a costume quick-change??? And she enters her Bad Sandy era to Jamiroquai! Oh my god, this is sooooooooooooo long.

They cut back to the audience and everyone’s gone except for Joan who died of old age.

Jody traps both men behind a wall of ballerinas so she can DANCE alone without all their sperms flying everywhere (YES, sister), and then everyone freezes except Jody who keeps spinning and spinning and then FINALLY IT’S OVER. The audience is like CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP THIS IS THE GREATEST THING WE HAVE EVER WITNESSED AND WE ARE SPIRITUALLY CHANGED.

Jeeeeesus Christ!!!!!!

Except for Peter Gallagher and Kathleen, who hated it because it’s so stupid and creepy. I’m with them! Mis abuelas!

Jody’s parents show up backstage to congratulate her after not seeing her for an entire year and she’s like oh hey and absolutely blows them off. Are they… ghosts? Is that what’s going on? She can’t actually see or hear them? Zoe gets REAMED OUT by Peter Gallagher for taking over Maureen’s part without asking, but then he offers her a spot in the company.

Zoe: “Are you nuts?????”

Then she screams and it’s actually so cute.

Joan announces that she wants to give Cooper money to open his own dance company, so he approaches Jody and says he wants her to be his STAR: “Listen, you have to be in my company. You’ll be its star. We’ll be great together.”

Okay, I know where this is going. Jody is going to finally tell Cooper to EFF OFF! Wow, it’s going to be so cathartic! Right, guys?

……………guys?????

Jody says uhhhhhhhhhh idk hang on one sec and goes to meet with Peter Gallagher to find out if she got into the company or not, but THEN instead of letting him talk she gives a monologue about how all she ever wanted was to be one of ABC’s perfect ballerinas except now she’s learned that she’s not perfect, she’s just herself, “and I’m starting to think I like that even better,” so actually she doesn’t even WANT to know whether she got in or not because she realized doesn’t want to spend her best dancing years waving a rose back and forth in the back of a corps, so instead she is going to become A PRINCIPLE DANCER IN COOPER NIELSEN’S NEW COMPANY.

J’EXQUEESE!!!!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!!!?????

BUT YOU HATE HIM! REMEMBER? He’s a shitty little butthead who took advantage of you and hurt your feelings and gave you no dessert? We did a whole thing about it? And even from a professional standpoint he is a chaotic and destabilizing leader? But instead of joining the actual prestigious REAL dance company you’re joining this guy’s dance company? SO WHAT WAS THE MOVIE ABOUT!?!??!?!?!!?!??

Cooper: “You’re not going to regret this.” [GOES IN FOR KISS]

Jody: “You’re a great choreographer [Ed.: ??????????] but as a boyfriend you kinda suck.”

Wow. You got him! Somehow Oprah gets into the company, even though he did not dance in the workshop (if that’s possible, then why was Zoe worried about being in the corps?), which, lol, fine, good. Sergei and his girlfriend, who exists, get into a company in San Francisco. Charlie gets in to the ABC too, I think. I gotta be honest I was playing Solitaire PRETTY hard by this point.

Jody asks Charlie to be her date for the party tonight. They kiss. Movie over.

There’s no way Cooper’s dance company made it through Covid.