When it comes to documentary film, Hollywood hates to leave well enough alone. Remember Roberta Guaspari-Tzavaras? She’s the violin teacher whose work on behalf of public school kids in Harlem was celebrated in a documentary called Small Wonders. Then her story was turned into the middling feature film Music Of The Heart in 1999, with Meryl Streep as the devoted teacher.
If you saw last year’s hit documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, then you’ve already seen Take The Lead, more or less. Pierre Dulaine is the ballroom dance teacher whose program has helped change inner-city children’s lives for the better — which is what Mad Hot Ballroom was all about.
Now Dulaine gets the mediocre feature treatment in Take The Lead. He’s played by Antonio Banderas.
The middle school kids who take Dulaine’s dance program in real life are transformed by the miracle of Hollywood into young adults for this film.
Take The Lead cuts back and forth between the world of privilege and elegant ballroom dancing and the frantic world and survival mode existence of urban high school students.
Pierre Dulaine is a man who believes in the transformative power of art, and so he volunteers to teach ballroom dancing at a tough, inner-city high school in New York. His ideas are ridiculed by both teachers and students. As a form of punishment, he’s given the job of supervising detention hall.
The kids in detention hall are considered the school losers. They all seem to come from bad homes. They love hip-hop and rap. They don’t use bad language or drugs or have weapons; they’re about as close to their real-life counterparts as Frankie and Annette were to theirs.
Dulaine makes his reluctant new students listen to Ella, Peggy, Sarah and Nat and he also makes them learn ballroom dancing.
They protest! They learn, nonetheless. They begin to enjoy the dancing. Then they hear about a ballroom competition with a large cash prize and they become enthused!!!
The school principal (Alfre Woodard), Dulaine’s former adversary, starts to believe in him and his program. The kids begin to regard Dulaine as a father figure. The kids are dissed by rich white dance students but rise above it!!!!
Among the endless subplots in Take The Lead are the stories of Rock (Rob Brown) and Lahrette (Yaya DaCosta), good kids trying to survive terrible home lives. Then there’s the love triangle, the teacher who wants Dulaine removed from the school, the dangerous john, the sick dad, Rock’s flirtatation with crime, the worried debutante, her mother, her mother’s reputation and the all-white dance judges.
It does go on. And on. And on.
There’s some terrific music — in all genres — and some beautiful dancing in Take The Lead, but not nearly enough of either. The film is over-long, plot heavy, needlessly complicated and lacklustre, but the moments of dance and music keep it from being a total waste of time.
Maybe there’s something to this arts thing.
BOTTOM LINE: Wait for the video.
(This film is rated PG)
