On Pointe

I enjoy good films about dance. The fact that this one includes Juliet Doherty convinced me to watch it. Unfortunately, it was a disappointment. Though the main character, Paige (Doherty), has a passion for dance, the real focus of the film is the conflict between Paige and her mother, Lynda (Kaitlyn Black).

Paige's parents are separated and on the verge of divorce. Lynda is a bitter woman who takes her frustrations out on her children, especially Paige. Lynda's behavior is abusive, and others see that, but can do little to intervene. Paige's dance instructor does what he can and, eventually, makes a positive impact.

Doherty's dancing is the best part of the film, but the entire film feels incomplete and the ending is abrupt. See "High Strung Free Dance" for a better representation of Doherty's talents.

The main character is a beautiful dancer, but the acting is awful. The characters who don't have to dance were horrible actors which doesn't make sense because they didn't need to compromise on that. I guess it's the directing too. It's very slow moving and I almost shut it off. I also didn't like how the character doesn't eat. That should have been addressed. I expected her to faint or something, but nope. Not cool. Also the mother makes no sense. If she never had a job or did anything with her life then why on earth didn't she watch her daughter dance? You'd think she'd want her daughter to have opportunities-the whole fear of failure thing on the mom's end made no sense to me. The mom also seemed super young. 36? Real enough but wow my mom was like 50 when I was that age. Anyhow I feel like teenagers will like it. It's like a step up from the American girl movies and it's clean enough.

A real ballerina. A beautiful dancer. That's all that is good about the movie. If the whole movie had Juliet Doherty dancing then it would have been far better. Problem is none of the actors are believable. The script is redundant in such a way that the characters are all the same with same expressions.

You can tell most of the actors in the movie have no experience acting. You can tell who the professional actors are like Kaitlyn Black, the mother, and Asher Angel, the brother. All the acting is so wooden that it makes one not care about the story.

It's too bad for the premise of the story was good to begin with.

A beautiful, talented, spectacularly smart young woman has dedicated her life to dance. Everyone envies her. Her dance instructor may or may not have a candle-lit shrine to her in the back of his studio. She drives a brand new Lexus despite the fact that she isn't out of high school. She is perfection incarnate.

She has no friends, because who would want to be friends with a beautiful, talented, spectacularly smart young woman with a hot car. Her most vicious enemy is her psychotically spiteful mother, who is mysteriously only five years older than she is.

But then, tragedy! Life comes crashing down around her after she gets a couple of B's on her math. Yes, B's. Suddenly she is forced to give up dance forever, ostensibly because they have no money (the Lexus must be a lease) but mostly because her mother literally hates her. Then her dad announces he wants a divorce, and no one can be surprised why.

Luckily her math tutor is the same age as she is, hunky, and plays a soulful guitar. That's as far as I got before this epic tale of a privileged white girl crashing into the depths of slightly less privilege made me run from the room weeping at the injustice of this cold, uncaring universe.

Really dfficult to get through this - i enjoy ballet and all kinds of ballet movies, but not this one. the drama/acting is just so below anything i have ever seen. juliette is a beautiful dancer, but she does very little dancing in the movie. the movie is trying too hard to be a story, and it just doesnt work. i seek out movies, old and new, with or about ballet, and this one falls way short. bad script. bad execution.