Freestyle

Low-budget movies need stronger scripts than big-budget films, and this ill-written picture from Film London's Microwave project should never have been greenlighted. Derivative of over-familiar American models it centres on the romance between a working-class Oxford-bound schoolgirl and a handsome working-class lad, both black and from south London, and he introduces her to freestyle, a combination of hip-hop dancing and basketball. The dialogue is stilted, the performances perfunctory, the handling of the milieu (as compared with Babylon or Kidulthood ) uninteresting.