Backup Dancers From Hell: Jason Derulo - “In My Head”

We get things started outside some convenience store, because that’s apparently where all the hot girls hang. There’s some people standing around that we don’t know, some of them flirting, others posing in a way that indicates how much they really like wearing odd clothing. Jason is just standing there, looking a little bored or maybe he forgot his lines, not sure.

Then three girls come prancing out of the store, looking like RuPaul just rang a bell and the drag race is on. Jason is immediately infatuated with the third girl, probably because her hair is the prettiest and she has more zippers than anybody else. Jason decides that the best way to impress her is to start singing a Top 40 hit, despite the fact that she might not care for such things and just wants to eat her beef jerky.

Of course, the first line Jason sings is his name, because that’s what people mystifyingly do these days. (I don’t really get that. What serious songwriter is going to go “hey, what this song really needs is for you to product place YOURSELF, right here. That will make the song perfect!”) Once Jason gets to the less self-involved part of the lyrics, we start getting flash cuts of Jason (I’m guessing) shadow-boxing with himself.

Anyway, while Jason sings, Pretty Girl just kind of struts around the parking lot. She know she hot. In fact, she decides to play hard to get, and starts flirting with one of the extras standing nearby, which makes Jason jealous and he snatches her away. Now that they are officially a couple, because that’s all it takes these days, Pretty Girl now gets to appear along with Jason in the flashing shadow scenes, where the first thing she does is grab her breasts, because she’s a good Christian girl and all.

Now that Pretty Girl has been upgraded to co-star billing, she smiles a little bit more and lets the camera get close-ups of her high-heeled boots. In the shadow scenes, she kicks the “dancing” into over-drive, raising her hands over her head and really thinking she’s in a scene from “Flashdance”. (Jason, if you’re keeping score, is still doing some kind of kung-fu crap that isn’t very sexy and doesn’t help move the story along.)

Meanwhile, in the parking lot, the rest of the folks are pairing off into couples and making eyes at one another. They don’t seem to be paying any attention to Jason, which is kind of rude considering all the trouble he went to setting up a sound system at the convenience store. Jason doesn’t seem to mind, focusing on Pretty Girl, because he’s never seen anyone stay on their feet this long wearing heels that high, although she’s cheating a little by leaning against a car.

Then we a have a bridge in the song, where Jason breathes really heavily like he’s doing a voiceover for an Advair commercial. This causes the shadow couple to do a few naughty moves, and we learn that Pretty Girl is very limber and just might possibly be going into labor. She disappears from the shadow scenes for a little bit, probably looking for someone who can hold the baby until she’s done dancing, which leaves Jason by himself, pretending to be a mime in France.

Back in the parking lot, some loser tries to steal Pretty Girl away from Jason, which means they have to dance away from him, making sure they stomp on the beat. Pretty Girl looks a little irritated, mostly because of the attempted abduction, but she’s also not pleased that she can’t lean on the car anymore. Maybe she’s anemic.

Oh wait, now the two of them are in what looks like a jail cell, while an odd blue light makes their outfits look shiny. Pretty Girl is back to her happy place, because she can lean on the bars while Jason sings, staring at his chin and wondering why he didn’t finish shaving that morning. The prison bars apparently make her feel pretty sexy, because she squirms a lot and pouts her lips.

We are still getting jump cuts of the shadow dancers, but I’m pretty bored with that. You can’t really see anything, it’s hard to tell what they’re doing, and Jason is still convinced that marital arts are somehow romantic. But at least Pretty Girl found a daycare center, because she’s back in the action, touching herself like the Divinyls said she should.

It’s the parking lot again, with PG back against the car, and we get close-ups of Jason comparing his shoes to her boots. (I guess footwear is really important to the younger crowd.) It looks like Jason somehow wins the shoe competition, because then he and two buddies get to have a dance-off in two conveniently-empty parking spaces.

So they hop around in formation for a bit, because synchronized dancing is always happening at places where you can buy Slushees and rolling papers. We’ve seen it all before, and better, so even Pretty Girl gets bored and starts talking to somebody else, because she can’t be in a relationship with someone who has better shoes.

Jason, realizing he needs to kick things up a notch, sends his backup dancers scurrying into the night, and then does a solo dance, which clearly shows that although he may have seen the “Billie Jean” video a lot, he didn’t really pay attention and can only half-ass do the moves. In desperation, he does this weird spinning thing that causes his shadow self to start wearing a red shirt. The backup homies race in just long enough to remind Jason that no dance sequence is complete without a crotch grab, so they all do that.

Finally, Jason stops dancing and we can relax a little bit. As the song fades away, we learn that Jason was only imagining the encounter with Pretty Girl, and now he approaches her without all the singing and dancing and shoe-comparing. She smiles at him and asks “Haven’t we met before?”

Uh, yeah. You were giving birth to his child just three minutes ago. God these people have short attention spans…

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