It only took Dance Flick about a minute for things to get vulgar as one particularly flourishing dance move was capped with a golden shower on the dancer’s opponent. That little stunt immediately set the tone for the rest of the movie, although I think as far as Wayans Brother spoofs go, this one was relatively tame. As the title implies, the target for lampooning this time are all those cutesy urban dance-off movies like Save the Last Dance and Step Up, a collection of films that really are harmless all things considered despite their clichés.

But I think with this film, the Wayans family hoped to answer the eternal question of American cinema: Can one be racist against their own race? There certainly was more than one moment in Dance Flick where I cringed beneath my protective PC blanket and wondered if what I was seeing and hearing was in bad taste or really bad taste. I will say however that Wayans seemed supremely confident in their material, because ever single last member of the Wayans family seemed to have a part in it. Now I’m not one to judge, but there’s nepotism and then there’s hiring your second cousin as the gaffer because you can.

I’m joking of course, but only barely. Written by five Wayanses, produced by several more, directed by Damien Wayans, and starring many the brood’s the next generation, this movie was definitely a family project. Now I admire that, and maybe even respect it a little, but is it unreasonable to ask for something more than tired spoofs and potty humour? I don’t think so. The Wayans need to seriously up their game if they want to keep playing because those two idiots that made Epic Movie, Date Movie and the prophetically titled Disaster Movie already have the market on lazy parodies that not even the desperate Rob Lowe-starring, Lorne Michael-less days of SNL wouldn’t do.

But the stars have moxy I’ll give them that. Damon Wayans Jr. and Shoshana Bush seem to have genuine chemistry enough to make you believe that they’re doing more than setting up the next joke, and Bush’s reaction shots are hilarious. And Essence Atkins throws herself into the role of Charity with such gusto that you can laugh with abandon at the type of parental neglect that usually kicks off an episode of Special Victims Unit. Amy Sedaris squeezes some humour out of her role as the dance instructor whose name can’t be read (or written) in polite company no matter how many accents you throw on it.

But in the end, any film’s cast can only do so much. The script basically has three types of jokes: the ones that work, the ones that don’t and the ones the ones that work until they’re taken too far. The scene where Megan’s mother dies is a good example of the latter, which starts out strong only to literally get thrown under the bus with stuff that was tired when Looney Tunes were doing this stuff fresh. I wish that the filmmakers had a stronger trust in their material. A gag at Little Miss Sunshine fell kind of flat and the Twilight prom spoof at the end felt tacked on after the success of that movie last fall.

Parody is hard, but self-parody is easy, and Dance Flick veers there so wildly and so often that it’s difficult to find much to love about it. I will say that it’s more competently put together than any other recent parody/spoof comedies, which goes to show you one thing about this endeavour: experience counts. If the intention is, and I believe it is, for the younger Wayans to pick up the comedy legacy of their groundbreaking forbearers-or at least the ones that made In Living Colour what it was-then they need a new business model. Look at what Damon Wayans did with Mo’ Money or Keenan Ivory with Low Down Dirty Shame. Not great movies, but at least they had some originality to them. And the less I see one guy urinating on another guy, the better,