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Drumline: A New Beat

Drumline: A New Beat (2014)

October. 27,2014
|
5.1
|
PG
| Drama Comedy Music

A girl from New York attends a college in Atlanta to join their once-famous marching band.

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Reviews

Actuakers
2014/10/27

One of my all time favorites.

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WillSushyMedia
2014/10/28

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

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ThedevilChoose
2014/10/29

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

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Kaydan Christian
2014/10/30

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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Marc Davis
2014/10/31

A New Beat picks up twelve years after the original. This time the movie finds itself centered around a talented but overly ambitious young female freshman, Dani (Alexandria Shipp), new to Atlanta A&T's marching band and drum section instead of the hotheaded but equally talented male lead Nick Cannon played in the original. Let me start off by saying I really liked the first Drumline, and I didn't expect a sequel that actually lived up to the first one, especially given its "made for TV" status. However, since I was in the marching band myself while in college and high school, as you can imagine, I absolutely love movies centered around marching bands. This genre is so small, I'm willing to give every single film a chance, but while A New Beat was certainly entertaining, it just wasn't memorable. The biggest thing that holds A New Beat back is while various aspects of the main characters' lives were different enough that we didn't get exactly the same movie, most of the main plot elements were just a rehash of the first film. I just felt like I was watching a remake created solely for the purpose of showing what this movie would look like if shot in the social media/smartphone era. Let's talk about some other aspects of the film… Alexandria Shipp does a decent job as the lead. Leonard Roberts reprises his role as Sean Taylor. This time he's back as the head band director. Not too bad considering how perfect Orlando Jones was as the band director in the first film. Nick Cannon also reprises his role for a much less significant part. Truthfully, his part could have been written out and it wouldn't have had any impact on the film whatsoever. The rest of the cast? Clearly one of the most beautiful set of co-starts they could find; however, the acting itself left much to be desired. It all just seemed so forced and stale – and the goes for the movie overall. The scenes and camera-work for the band performances were underwhelming and the dialogue, script, and plot were indicative of a "made for TV" movie. I'm actually a little surprised at how mediocre the band performance scenes came out considering the director, Bille Woodruff, specializes in R&B/hip-hop music videos. In addition, the tension and drama Woodruff and the writers tried to create just didn't resonate with me - very over the top and unconvincing. The biggest thing lacking though from this movie was the band itself - not nearly enough performances. They placed too much emphasis on the backstory. I mean, don't get me wrong, I wish more filmmakers would spend additional time on character development; however, the band aspects of this film just felt much less significant this time around. Not to mention, when you have this much backstory and the characters still seem one dimensional, then someone has failed. All that said, I still enjoyed watching A New Beat. It didn't have the charm and originality of the first film, being more of a remake with a female lead rather than a sequel. But seeing this remade from the perspective of the social media/smartphone era was interesting. As you might already have guessed, text messaging is used heavily in the film and the communications of our characters are nicely plastered across the screen for viewers to see. We also get to see spectators in the stands filming band performances on their smartphones; the main characters can check out their roommates on Facebook prior to meeting for the first time on campus; and the fight that breaks out after the first drumline challenge ends up on YouTube and probably WorldStar HipHop. (Rolls eyes…) A lot has changed in the real world since the first movie just 12 years prior to the sequel. Unfortunately, not enough of the movie plot itself has changed to make this truly a "new beat". It gets a "generous" 5 stars simply because I love this genre – oh, and did I mention how attractive the cast members are?

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the_remixer08
2014/11/01

I never go into movies with high expectations, especially for television. I just always look at them for entertainment. As for this movie, I knew it wasn't going to compare to the original, but I just didn't particularly care for the writing for this film. Everything seemed sort of rushed by them trying to talk about what happened to past/original characters, and a lot of lines were a bit corny. It just didn't seem "real" you know? However, I did enjoy the band scenes. I was also a little disappointed in how they even wrote in the lead character.They made it seem like she was a female Myles, when I just wish her situation could have been different and maybe she was just having a hard time simply because she was just a female on the line. Why give us a part two when we are looking at a person with the exact same issues? And if she was a bit like Myles, they could have had Myles talk to her about his past experiences. It just seemed kind of rushed to me. It had the potential to be way better than what it was.

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linmusclan
2014/11/02

This movie has no basis in reality. I'm sorry but if you were a parent who child was smart enough to get into multiple schools and you had the income to support it, who in their right mind would send the child to an out-of-state school just to play the drums. You can say what you want but this movie is filled with choppy and corny black to black dialogue. It even has one female character being underhandedly racist to another for no absolute reason (if you go to a HBCU you would know how unlikely that is). Unlike Nick Cannon, the main character is not relatable to anyone at all. I don't know why Hollywood think people are going to pity a gorgeous person who seemingly has everything going for them but they have to work for something they want.

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ja-160
2014/11/03

I enjoyed the first movie and was excited to see they created a new one along the same lines, but was disappointed after watching it. I had hoped for some originality but it seems they just replaced the Devon character with a girl who does the same things that got him in trouble and acts out during performances. I also don't understand why they couldn't use scenes of the band actually playing the music instead of playing some soundtrack over their movements that didn't mesh with what they were doing. As someone who marched in marching band and drum corps, it was distracting to say the least that the music and the action didn't match. I would have expected better from a movie about marching.

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