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Dance films are the perennial guilty pleasure of American moviegoers, and despite overwhelmingly embarrassing outcomes (You Got Served, Step it Up, Honey, Save the Last Dance) they keep getting made. There is something about the promise of a stellar finale that persuades us to suffer through the cardboard dialogue and contrived drama that usually precede it. In 2005, two independent films offered a more attractive formula with Mad Hot Ballroom and Rize documenting urban youth transcending troubled neighborhoods by way of dance. Aiming the camera at real-life characters gave the genre the shot of humanity it needed and allowed the dancing to take center stage. Planet B-Boy uses this approach to explore the contemporary relevance of breakdancing, but instead of zooming in on one community, its story spans continents.

Teams from 18 different countries participate in “The Battle of the Year.” Founder and featured talking head Thomas Hergenröther first launched the competition in 1990 to save the art of breaking after it outlived its commercial appeal. Dancers make the trip to Braunschweig, Germany to spar for top bragging rights and a raise in profile that can hopefully turn their passion into lucrative careers. Today, BOTY is growing in size and status even as breakdancing becomes increasingly dated. In Planet B-Boy, five top teams struggle to prove their worth to other competitors as well as to the members of their families and societies that shake their heads at the whole phenomenon.

Director Benson Lee relies on expected urban motifs to move his story along, but the dancing is by no means confined to the basements, warehouses or ghetto sidewalks typical of other battle videos. Instead, stunning dance sequences occur in front of world landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Las Vegas skyline, the Jal Jang Buddhist monastery and the 38th Parallel – the point of division between North and South Korea. BOTY itself is staged in a giant auditorium in front of thousands of spectators, giving it the feel of any world-class sporting event.

As for the athleticism of the contenders, any thirty-second shot from Planet makes the aforementioned Hollywood finales look like Jazzercize 101. The B-boys here are not actors who have memorized a few steps of choreography; they have, as one Korean dancer put it, spent two or three years just spinning on their heads. Scene after scene showcases gravity-defying, spine-jeopardizing combinations that had the theatre audience shrieking along with the action on screen.

Naturally, there is more to Planet than wowing viewers with $20 power moves. Lee takes advantage of the ensemble’s international heritage to explain how hip hop has influenced kids all over the world, and how their cultures have in turn influenced hip hop.

Alone and with their parents, baby mommas and teammates, the dancers attempt to explain their obsession with what is widely considered a passé trend. Common themes pepper the interviews, but other reasons are as varied as their backgrounds. Some describe an addiction to the physical power, personal expression and attention associated with performing. Others cite a unity with the Samurai tradition, a desire to represent their country, or simply an aversion to getting a “real” job.

Family dynamics spark plenty of priceless one-liners -- sentimental or hysterical -- and reveal attitudes about race, individuality and honor in the East and West. By the end of the film you may feel conflicted about which team to root for, having become attached to both Japan’s Katsu, who labors alongside his widowed mother in their rice shop and France’s Lil Kev, a 14-year-old prodigy who snorts at his mother’s every opinion. In both cases you might recognize the universal balancing act of teenagers: to please their parents while coming into their own, sometimes unexpected identity.

For Katsu, Kevin and the others, breakdancing is how they cope and where they try out the persona of who they want to be. This is what’s at stake when they are in a battle, and it’s the one thing that can’t be calculated by the judges’ fastidious scorecards. You’ll know you’ve witnessed it after you hit the wall of complete trick-fatigue, think you can’t possibly be impressed by anything else, and yet clap spontaneously at the next daring freeze. At that moment you won’t care what decade it is or whether tracksuits are fashionable – it will just spring you out of your seat like a real finale should.