Honey (2003)

Honey Daniels, an aspiring dancer, runs a dancing school with emphasis on hip-hop. Her goal is to keep the children off the streets of Harlem.One of several reasons that this is a good film is that there is absolutely no violence.When Honey makes it big, she begins to neglect the children and then discovers that her producer wants sexual favors before her career and really jump. Refusing to yield to his demands makes him do the most despicable thing-have her fire the children he had previously agreed to letting perform.At this point, the film takes a Judy-Mickey approach. Have a benefit to raise funds for a dance school. Of course, this is successful as you can imagine.The dancing is great. The story-line of fulfillment and promise are both realized. Jessica Alba, as Honey, is wonderful in the role.

Honey is a film that stars Jessica Alba together with Mekhi Phifer, Lil' Romeo, Joy Bryant, David Moscow and features performances by Tweet, Jadakiss and Ginuwine. This is a feature debut from music-video director Bille Woodruff. Honey is a girl from the streets who works in a record store, teaches the occasional dance class at a community center, and treks downtown every weekend to hit the clubs and try out some new moves. There, she meets a music video producer who offers her a chance to be a choreographer. But at a price she eventually learns she's unwilling to pay. Determined to pick herself back up, Honey goes back to the inner- city of her youth with plans of starting a dance school.Honey is the usual Hollywood silliness, executed with sincerity but not much imagination. For some reason, Alba's sexy gyrations are supposed to be more empowering than other dancers' sexy gyrations, while being no less titillating.But nevertheless, it provide some lift to this corny and formulaic movie.

I have just watched "Honey" because of the name of Jessica Alba in the cast. Fortunately I did not pay attention to the unfair and very underrated IMDb User Rating. "Honey" is indeed a delightful and enjoyable feel-good movie. Certainly it is not a masterpiece, and it will never be indicated for an Oscar, but it is not its intention. "Honey" is, first of all, a great homage to hip-hop, with the participation of many stars such as Tweet, Missy Elliot, Blaque, Jadakiss, Ginuwine among others, and awesome dance choreographs. The story has a good message that everybody must fight to make the dreams come true. The stunning Jessica Alba is wonderful in the role of Honey. The story may be corny for bitter viewers, with most of the characters being nice; horrible, for those who have prejudice against poor people or hip-hop; or great for a viewer that appreciate a great entertainment like me. The music score is fantastic, and the DVD released in Brazil by Universal is outstanding, full of wonderful extras. My vote is eight.

"We just peoples."Can you believe that I actually went to the movies to see this? Sure, I was like 16 at the time. And I was on a date. But that's still kind of embarrassing.   You usually couldn't get me to touch one of these movies with a ten foot pole. The whole "dancing" genre just does not appeal to me in the least. But there's exceptions to every rule, and Jessica Alba is an exception to every rule. So against my better judgment, I gave Honey a try.Every imaginable cliché from this kind of movie is conveniently collected here in one neat package. The impossibly sweet and sunny heroine with a heart of gold, who achieves her dreams of dancing, but must deal with the sinister pitfalls that come along with success. The stern, disapproving parent, who is totally convinced that their child is throwing away her talent. The rift that grows between the main character and her friend, as her career takes off. The perfectly diverse, multicultural cast. The whitewashed, sanitized view of "urban culture", where the only bad guys are the drug dealers (whom the precious children are saved from in the end, of course). And the horribly unnatural "slang", that no real person on earth actually speaks like. Some of the meager entertainment that Honey has to offer, comes from how forced and hilariously awkward the dialogue is.   Your tolerance for all that could possibly be much higher than mine. I'm the guy who automatically turns up his nose at any dross like this, churned out just to appeal to young urban (a.k.a. black) people. Surprise, some of us are immune to this kind of derivative, pandering nonsense.    What I am thoroughly UN-immune to, though, is attractive young actresses. The star of this movie, in particular. So maybe I'd better climb back down off my oh-so-high horse. Getting to see Jessica Alba half-dressed and dancing around suggestively - holds some appeal for me. Not nearly enough to rescue this movie, but enough to make me not rip it out of my DVD player and throw it in the garbage. What can I say? I'm male.