Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dance Monsters’ On Netflix, Where Dancers Strut Their Stuff Behind CGI Avatars

Dance Monsters is a dance competition with a twist: The contestants dance backstage with motion capture suits on, and what’s seen on stage is their CGI avatar. Hosted by Ashley Roberts, with Ne-Yo, Lele Pons and Ashley Banjo as judges, the hopefuls are all people who have danced at one point in their lives, whether it was professionally or in school. The idea is that the avatar is supposed to set them free to shake their stuff in front of the judges. The winner of the competition gets a cool $250,000.

DANCE MONSTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes from the first season of Dance Monsters.

The Gist: While we see glimpses of the contestants in their motion capture suits, we don’t see their faces. In the first of three initial heats, five contestants dance for the judges: Jam, a furry red monster with glasses; Marsha, who looks like a stack of marshmallows; Peaches, a chubby orange fur ball; Beti, a bling-clad purple yeti; and Jellifer, a jellyfish-like creature who glows.

The judges vote the top three dancers to go through to the next round; the bottom two have a face-to-face dance-off. The one who gets the most votes from the judges moves on, and the eliminated monster returns to human form.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take So You Think You Can Dance, combine it with Fox’s avatar-based singing contest Alter Ego, sprinkle in a dash of The Masked Singer, and then you’ve got Dance Monsters.

Our Take: One of the things that we found distracting with Alter Ego when it came out last year is that the humanoid CGI avatars were a little herky-jerky and that their mouth movements didn’t always match the singing the contestant was doing. Dance Monsters has taken care of this problem by making the CGI avatars more cartoonish. In fact, the furrier and pudgier the avatars are, the more they’re able to hide any flaws in how the motion capture technology conveys the dancers’ moves.

We’re not 100% sure why the producers have decided to obscure the identities of the dancers until they’re eliminated. It’s not like The Masked Singer, where all the contestants are celebrities. Perhaps the producers think they’re doing the contestants a favor by showing them in full wardrobe and makeup instead of the admittedly unflattering motion capture suits. But the payoff of seeing the real identity of the eliminated contestant doesn’t seem to be big enough to keep their identities obscured until then.

That being said, Dance Monsters is a fun show because of the avatars. For one thing, the avatars are well-done. But the dancers’ stories, and why they hope the avatars will be able to loosen them up, are definitely a big part of the show. Many of the contestants had to put their dance dreams on hold for various reasons, including the fact that some of them didn’t have the right “look.”

The judges slot into the usual roles: All are positive, but Ne-Yo has the most critiques, Pons is the one who gives the most love, and Banjo goes on vibe. Sometimes their critiques aren’t quite biting enough, but they all understand that these people are putting themselves out there, so they try to make sure they’re as constructive and kind as possible.

Sex and Skin: None. In fact, Dance Monsters is a show that the entire family can watch.

Parting Shot: Right as Ne-Yo is about to give his deciding vote on who gets to stay, the show cuts to the credits, with Roberts saying, “What? Y’all know we just had to do that. Keep watching to find out what’s next.” Yes, we cursed aloud, but we also hit “Next Episode” to find out who got eliminated.

Sleeper Star: The dancer who is behind the Beti avatar has potential. He was the most daring during his first dance, and the only one who didn’t need backup dancers.

Most Pilot-y Line: Like with Alter Ego, we were watching the entire time trying to figure out what the judges see. Is it a hologram? Or do they watch on a monitor? We also chuckled at the “green room” scenes, where a stage manager comes out and tells the next contestant they’re due on stage. If we have things correct, that stage manager is talking to no one. But who knows?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Dance Monsters is a feelgood show that is fun to watch, with CGI that works well most of the time. It definitely is a show you can sit down and watch with your kids.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.