Work It

I remember scrolling through Netflix in August 2020—a month defined by the hazy, indoor monotony of the mid-pandemic—and seeing the neon-drenched thumbnail for Work It. At the time, it felt like just another brick in the "Algorithm-Core" wall, a movie designed by a sentient spreadsheet to capture the teen demographic. But watching it again recently, while a particularly aggressive pigeon kept banging its head against my window (a distraction that strangely mirrored the protagonist’s early dance attempts), I realized this film is a fascinating, if unintentional, philosophical document of our current era.

The Performative Soul of Gen Z

On the surface, Work It is a standard-issue dance flick. You know the drill: the underdog, the misfit crew, the big competition against the arrogant reigning champs. But look closer, and it’s actually a commentary on the crushing weight of the "well-rounded" myth. Sabrina Carpenter plays Quinn Ackerman, a high school senior whose entire personality is a carefully curated resume for Duke University. When she realizes her academic perfection isn't enough, she lies and says she’s on her school’s elite dance team.

There is something deeply existential about Quinn’s dilemma. In the contemporary landscape, it’s no longer enough to be "the smart one." The 21st-century prestige economy demands that you also be "the creative one" or "the athletic one." Quinn isn't dancing because she loves the movement; she’s dancing because she needs to colonize another territory of excellence to satisfy an admissions officer. It’s a "fake it ‘til you make it" ethos pushed to its most absurd logical extreme. The film asks: In an era where every hobby must be monetized or leveraged for status, does "passion" even exist, or is it just another metric?

The Descartes of the Dance Floor

The most "cerebral" joy of the film lies in watching Sabrina Carpenter navigate the Cartesian dualism of her character. Quinn is a girl who lives entirely in her head. Her body is essentially a cumbersome meat-suit she’s forced to pilot through the world. When she tries to dance, you can practically see the synapses firing and failing; she’s trying to calculate rhythm. It’s a brilliant bit of physical comedy that speaks to a very modern anxiety: the disconnect between our digital, intellectual selves and our physical reality.

Thankfully, she’s anchored by Jordan Fisher as Jake Taylor, the injured dance prodigy who becomes her coach. Jordan Fisher is essentially a human cheat code for likability, and his chemistry with Carpenter feels surprisingly grounded for a movie where people randomly break into synchronized backflips. Keiynan Lonsdale (whom I loved in Love, Simon) plays the antagonist, Julliard, with a delightful, campy menace. He represents the "pure" artist, but even he is obsessed with the optics of his dominance. The film subtly suggests that everyone, from the clumsy nerd to the elite pro, is performing for an invisible audience—whether that’s a college recruiter or a social media following.

A Streaming Artifact in the Wild

Why has Work It slipped into that weird "Netflix Obscurity" where millions have seen it but nobody remembers it? It’s a victim of the very era it depicts. Released when theaters were shuttered, it was a "digital-only" event that lacked the cultural footprint of a theatrical release. It’s a "fast fashion" movie—bright, trendy, and meant to be consumed and replaced by next week’s content drop. Yet, there’s a craftsmanship here that deserves a second look. Director Laura Terruso gives the dance sequences a clarity that many modern blockbusters lack, and the screenplay by Alison Peck (who wrote the equally cynical-but-sweet UglyDolls) has a sharp wit that bites harder than you’d expect.

The film also benefits from the "Sabrina Carpenter Effect." Seeing it now, after her meteoric rise to pop royalty with hits like "Espresso," adds a layer of meta-commentary. You’re watching a superstar-in-waiting play a girl who is told she has no "rhythm" or "it-factor." It’s a hilarious irony that makes the movie feel like a time capsule of a performer just before she broke the simulation. Liza Koshy also provides a high-energy performance as Quinn’s best friend, bringing her hyper-expressive YouTube energy to a role that could have been a generic sidekick.

Ultimately, Work It succeeds because it acknowledges its own artifice. It knows it’s a trope-heavy dance movie, but it uses those tropes to explore the exhausting performativity of the 2020s. It’s a film about a girl learning to get out of her head, even as the world demands she stay inside it to keep her GPA up. While it may not be a "classic" in the traditional sense, it’s a sharp, energetic, and surprisingly thoughtful look at what happens when our internal drive for success crashes into the messy reality of a dance floor. It’s the perfect 93-minute distraction for anyone who has ever felt like they were just "acting" their way through their own life.

Cool Details

The Fisher Connection: Jordan Fisher didn't just act; he's a highly accomplished dancer and choreographer in real life, having starred in Hamilton and won Dancing with the Stars. His "instructional" scenes with Sabrina Carpenter carry an extra weight because he’s effectively teaching her for real. Pandemic Pivot: The film was one of the early benefactors of the "Netflix Summer," where the lack of theatrical competition turned mid-budget comedies into massive global hits overnight, a release strategy that has since become the industry standard for the genre. The Real "Work It": The movie's choreography was handled by Aakomon Jones, the same mastermind behind the moves in Pitch Perfect and Black Panther*, which explains why the routines feel so much more professional than your average teen movie.