Reviewed - Stomp the Yard:THE vogue for inspirational US college movies in which troubled teens are liberated through dance continues with Stomp the Yard, a film-making-by-numbers exercise for director Sylvain White, who ticks off all the cliches that constitute the formula for this genre.

The movie introduces its working-class hero, DJ (Columbus Short), as an ace Los Angeles street dancer who gets into a fight in which his brother is killed. DJ is sent off to the fictional Truth University in Atlanta, working his way through college as an assistant to his gardener uncle (Harry Lennix).

Apart from making the odd visit to the library, the students appear to be entirely preoccupied with the rivalry between the college fraternities, which are obsessed with rituals that are almost as weird as those undergone by the Yale students in The Good Shepherd.

Of course, it's only a matter of time before DJ gains respect on the campus and gets the girl, April (Meagan Good), who never seems to wear the same outfit more than once. April's dad, the college dean, disapproves of her relationship with this street boy. And, as is de rigueur for this breed of movie, it all culminates in an extended dance contest, preceded by some thinly contrived tension regarding DJ's eligibility to perform.

His outlet is step dancing, but not as we know it from Riverdance. These routines involve hip-hop, tap, marching and chanting, and the film saves the best dance scenes for the duel of the finale. Its other asset is the vigorous music composed by Tom Boland, a Dubliner based in Los Angeles, and Sam Retzer.

In a movie that is far too long to sustain its slender material, there is ample time to ponder on incidental observations, most notably that the settings - the university, the bars, the dance contest - comprise an all-black universe in which the only visible whites are extras in an upmarket restaurant scene.