Antonio Banderas plays real life dance instructor Pierre Dulaine, whose idealism and unflagging faith in ghetto high school kids resulted in a national craze for teen ballroom dancing.
Sound familiar? The documentary on Dulaine’s story, the multi-award winning ‘Mad Hot Ballroom’ started shooting well after ‘Taker the Lead’ and beat it into the theatres. So the original story doesn’t feel as original.
Ray Liotta helped steer this film from the idea to the screen, inspired by the story of a man who taught mean street kids to find meaning in ‘corny old dances’. It’s an old-fashioned feel good movie with street cred.
Dulaine saw a way to help kids out of the spiral of drugs, violence and lack of self. After witnessing a teen smash up a car with a golf club in pure frustration, he decides to help him and others like him. He believes they are creative imaginative and energetic children, desperate for an outlet.
Dulaine volunteered to oversee detention classes in one of New York’s worst schools to teach them to dance. The detention class was Siberia for teachers, none even ventured to oversee or instruct them. So Dulaine was allowed in at first to guarantee the teachers an easy excuse.
Banderas cuts a suave figure in a black tux, with perfect manners and a persuasive personality, able to touch these kids like no one else, especially their parents. We don’t learn much about his private life and background, but we discover over time that he has a good heart and brave constitution when it comes to something he knows should be done. These kids have to be given choices.
They come to love him, and after a suitable period of defiance and rebellion, he’s their knight in shining patent leather shoes. They build a new music convention by marrying their hip hop with his waltzes, salsas and tangos and dream of competing in the big show.
It’s one of those films that’s ‘good for you’, but that’s not to say it lacks soul. It’s wholesome, inspiring and fun. It recalls ‘West Side Story’, ‘A Chorus Line’, anything Bob Fosse did, ‘Shall We Dance’ and ‘Fame’. And so many more. There are a host of films of this genre because they work; they offer instant gratification.
These films are all about striving – learning to dance and take pride in oneself, how confidence and sexuality come into the mix and characters who dance are suddenly raised up into euphoria and success and the world is theirs.
Having twinkle toes is as good as having quick fists, because dance subdues negativity and makes people get along. Enemies bury the hatchets and break out in tangos.
At least that’s what the movies tell us.
Like ‘Take the Lead’, they are uplifting while they’re onscreen and for a few minutes afterwards. But unless the film is ground-breaking or superbly executed, it doesn’t stay in the heart for long. The thrill is in the here and now, watching, the feeling of lightness and certainly that you could do that, no problem.
The problem is that they are pure fluff and rarely linger; they are the very definition of escapism.
The heart connection is absent.
Still, it’s a film children might appreciate, and while it won’t be ‘Fame’, it will pay tribute to a man who made a difference.
Liz Friedlander is a veteran director from the rock video game and brings that sensibility to ‘Take the Lead’, but fills it out with narrative cinematic structure for balance. It’s well told.
The film inadvertently becomes an indictment of family life in the inner city. Some of the characters families are broken, plagued by alcoholism, drugs and poverty, and one girl watches the babies as her mothers turns tricks in the bedroom. These portrayals seem like stereotyping of the worst kind.
So it veers from feel bad to feel good with redemption for anyone who makes the journey.
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