Netflix is very thirsty this year. First we had Hot Frosty with the muscular snowman coming to life. Now we have The Merry Gentlemen, a movie featuring shirtless male dancers. I’m afraid for the rest of this season.
Ashley (Britt Robertson) just got let go from her job as a dancer with the Jingle Belles. When she comes home to Sycamore Creek, she finds that the club her parents, Lily (Beth Broderick) and Stan (Michael Gross), own is very past due on the rent. If they don’t come up with $30,000 by Christmas, they will lose the space. To raise the money, Ashley decides to put on an all-male revue starring handyman Luke (Chad Michael Murray), bartender Troy (Colt Prattes), taxi driver Ricky (Hector David Jr.), and her brother-in-law Rodger (Marc Anthony Samuel).
As a dancer, this movie annoyed me. The Jingle Belles are supposed to be the Rockettes, complete with kickline. However, it’s painfully obvious that Robertson has zero dance experience and the director does absolutely nothing to try to hide it. Instead, she is put dead center of every dance, making the whole thing look amateurish.
This bleeds over into The Merry Gentlemen. Thankfully, Prattes has dance experience (he’s currently on Broadway in Aladdin) and David has martial arts experience (he was a Power Ranger). Those two are the saviors of the male revue. The other two move like it physically hurts them. I guess it’s a good thing they all work out so they have nice abs?
Sadly, even if you try to ignore the bad dancing, which is difficult since it’s the entire plot, the rest of the movie isn’t much better. The romance feels unearned. Ashley likes Luke because he is pretty and Luke likes Ashley because she taught him choreography? I really wish Netflix went in a different way with this. Hire some more actual dancers. I know this may sound stunning but there are dancers who can act. This would have been so much better if Ashley was a really good dancer and was able to take the “country bumpkins” and turn them into good dancers. But you have to cast people that can dance for that to happen. I am very disappointed.
Rating: The Rockettes would never