Here’s a little secret: as a film, Step Up 3D is gloriously bad. But oddly enough I’m not convinced that it’s a film at all. I think it’s actually an adaptation of the day dreams which most Britain’s Got Talent and X-Factor first round applicants must surely have running through their doughy heads just before Ant & Dec/Dermot usher them in to receive a brow-beating from that rich man with the toilet bowl-white teeth  and Nick Clegg’s haircut. The script was probably compiled by jotting down the hyperbolic hopes and dreams of these rambling individuals for whom the promise of stardom through bromidic self-expression is the only chance to actually find meaning from existence. Those crazy kids.

If you’ve seen Step Up 1: Once Upon a Time in Usher’s Head, or Step Up 2: Step Harder, then the plot is basically copied for the third time in Step Up 3D. The location is New York, and gawky dance nerd Moose is starting college with a final warning from his parents to stay away from dance crews ringing in his ear. Within two minutes he has arbitrarily beaten what looks like a Manga character in a dance battle and destroyed an innocent balloon seller’s crop of buoyant, lovely rubber orbs in the process.

The camera-wielding, douche beard-wearing Luke rescues Moose from the pursuing cops and introduces him to his live-in family of ethnically diverse dancers at a disused warehouse which they run as a club and use as a practice space for their ‘quirky’ styles of movement. Of course there is, like totally, the biggest street dance battle competition thing in the world ever coming up in a few weeks, and Moose is recruited to bring his own talents to the table. Moose and Luke get a love interest each, and the plot serves to string together the dance sequences one painfully clichéd scene after the next.

But who cares about all that really, when this film gives birth to the priceless phrase “Born from a Boombox”.

To be Born from a Boombox, or B-Fab, as the film’s characters call it, is apparently a catchall for describing someone who lives and breathes dancing, and it is, perhaps intentionally, enough to make street dance sceptics haul themselves down to the police station to get arrested and prevent the kind of violent outburst that this phrase threatens to spark.

On a positive note, Step Up 3D actually takes the time to make sure that the 3D effects are used to their distracting, illusion-shattering max. It’s a spectacle, and the dancers all play to the fact that they are having their undulating, sweaty bodies prodding out of the screen and into the eyes of the audience. It does a lot more than Street Dance 3D in this respect, and there is a good variety of dancing styles, with one section feeling very much like something from a 70-year-old Fred Astaire flick, which is definitely a good thing. Fans will love the fact that many of the cast from Step Up 2: The Streets return to help out Moose in his time of need, and there are some imaginative set pieces which left me very impressed.

So as a film Step Up 3D fails to find its feet (Hah) but as a third entry in a very disposal series it’s precisely what the people want.

Next time, Step Up 3D’s polar opposite The Expendables. Unless I see Salt first.