C Me Dance

This is the trailer for the “chick flick with a manifested menacing evil” known as C Me Dance.

The trailer promises something so radically incompetent and ham-fisted as to rival Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. While not as wall-to-wall uproarious as The Room (alas, no soft porn sex scenes), it does have moments that match the former’s spectacular highs (or lows). The movie opens with a poorly edited car chase. In the movie’s big action scene, a semi bears down on a smaller car. We cut to a woman glancing into the rear view mirror and wailing, “Why are you doing this to me!” The woman is clearly in a vehicle that is standing still while the truck is clearly shot by an entirely different crew. Thus is the style of C Me Dance. The woman in the smaller car dies in what is a sadly low rent crash (i.e. all sound effects), but her baby daughter lives on. Sixteen years later, she has blossomed into Sheri, a wannabe ballerina. Writer/Director/“Creator” Greg Robbins stars as Sheri’s father (he later calls the car accident “really quite strange”, otherwise it never comes up again). When Sheri is diagnosed with inoperable cancer, she proceeds to act grumpy and weakly pound her locker at school until she has an after-school sit-down with dad. “I do not want these feelings.” “Why do I have to die?” 

But lo, the cancer causes mysterious things to happen. Her dad hears a single thought escape from Sheri’s head. She and her dad both dream of synchronized hero diving. Sheri’s very touch causes people to flashback on a bootleg copy of The Passion of the Christ. And most frightening of all, she can stand in front of others and silently convert them into her creepy cult. At one point, Sheri, her father and Pastor Jeff conspire to convert all the kids at a concert with Sheri’s mysterious new power. Later, they will take over the airwaves. Sound diabolical? Yes, the scene really does play out like some evil plot being hatched by mad scientists, but remember these are the good guys. Sheri continues to convert the city until the big scene where everyone reads in the paper and hears on the radio that rapes and crimes have dropped, kidnappers are letting their victims go free, studios have stopped releasing non-family films, abortion clinics have shut their doors, and adult bookstores voluntarily shut down. No word on whether the death penalty is overturned though.

The bad guy is Satan, who wears a black trench coat and stalks Sheri - sometimes with a Satan stalker cam (at least that’s what I think I’m supposed to infer when the shot is obscured by dishes in the kitchen). Some highlights:

• At one point, Satan appears in Sheri’s bedroom. Rather than call the cops or fend him off, the father tells the intruder “You do not have God’s permission to be here.” To which Satan initially replies in Klingon, but translates as “Yes, I do.” End of menacing scene. 
• Sheri, delivering a sermon on national TV (the Networks have all given free airtime to Sheri by this point, sending a single producer to oversee the sermon), tells of a story where she watched a movie her dad told her she shouldn’t watch. As a result of watching it, she has been terrified of men in black trench coats ever since. 
• In an attempt to lure Sheri to the dark side, Satan takes on the form of Sheri’s mother, long dead these sixteen years. Sheri rebukes him with a sharp “Nice, try!” and then proceeds to tell Satan “You are such a loser!” 
• The “rape” in which a school bully chases Sheri through a neighborhood only to shove her in the grass repeatedly after catching up with her. After the rape scene, and subsequent conversion of the “rapist”, Sheri climbs into a car with her dad and sighs, “Wow. I mean . . . hunh.” This entire sequence is gold.
• When dad admits to recognizing a Christian band, Sheri smiles at him and says “I didn’t know you were so hip!” 
• The God special effect, which consists of a rippling effect and blown out lighting. 
• The excessive fist-bumping and nodding.
• Sheri telling her friend to stay off her foot, only to later run around the mall with this same friend in a shopping montage. 
• Trying to rearrange the same two dozen extras to make it look like the congregation is getting bigger. Or that the town is sizeable at all. (The tall guy is the give-away every time).
• Robbins' addressing God as "Man" in his prayers.
• The scenes in which Robbins effortlessly sells tired marketing plans to an easy-to-please client. (Just sell this same product with this new logo. I love it!)
• The soon-to-be-infamous line "Man, this is going to tick off the Devil!"
• And the ending in which Sheri opens her Christmas present (a vanity license plate C ME DANCE) and promptly dies at the foot of the Christmas tree. 

All in all, amazingly lazy (Sheri’s “message” is never even spoken aloud), unintentionally creepy, and outright hilarious. If we could just cut the boring preachy parts, it could even beat The Room as the most enjoyable worst movie ever made, I hope a cult rises out of this thing. I would love to watch this with an audience shouting at the screen and laughing drunkenly. Instead, I saw it in an empty theater. Only me and God. And God didn’t laugh once.