bbigham

Like "Music of the Heart," this film was inspired by a true story of a mentoring program in NY city schools. This time, it's a NY dance teacher who starts a ballroom dance program for inner school kids.

It's an enjoyable film with the gorgeous Bandares in the lead but the film makers apparently weren't satisfied with the real-life teacher's accomplishments. They felt they had to embellish them out of all sense of reality.

Instead of showing Dulaine's students as energetic but definitely amateur dancers, the film has them competing in a major ballroom dancing competition. The supposed impromptu tango performed during the competition is clearly one that would have required extensive choreography and rehearsing. Are we supposed to believe that these kids, with only a few months of training, could put on an exhibition worthy of "Flashdance"? In addition, the bonus feature on the real Dulaine shows that most of his students were grade schoolers, not the teenagers depicted in the film. The sexy dancing of the film was far removed from the innocent, graceful fox trots and waltz's of real life classes.

The ending was also a bit of a let down for me. The classes were supposed to teach the kids (among other things) respect for other people. Yet they commandeer the competition's sound system and disrupt the entire event by dancing to blaring rap and hip-hop music (definitely NOT ballroom dancing by the way!). The youngsters may have learned some dance steps, but little about etiquette and consideration.

I think Mad Hot Ballroom may be a better tribute to this kind of innovative program!

I absolutely loved this film, although I realize it's not for everyone.

Most of it consists of delicate little snippets of conversation with a group of recently deceased people. They relate stories of moments in their lives, with such beauty and poignancy and realism that one could imagine this a documentary. The "acting" (although it hardly seems to be acting at all!) is uniformly excellent.

In tiny snatches, we come to know quite lot about them. Best of all, the movie makes you think about life -- have we lived the kind of life that creates a memory we'd want to spend eternity with? Kore-eda Hirokazu (the director) manages that rare combination of humor, pathos and intellect that makes this film a winner.

I'm the first to admit I'm an impatient film viewer. I give a movie 20 minutes to get me involved in either the plot or the characters. I need to make an emotional connection to someone. Don't take this to mean I need immediate action ... many of my favorites are foreign films that introduce intriguing characters and then slowly tell their story. But I need to KNOW what the heck is going on and who the people are.

After 37 minutes of this movie, I still didn't understand anything. The editing was so choppy that the story jumped from one unrelated scene to another in what was far too rapid fire for this ol' brain to absorb. I still only had a vague notion of who the main characters were, and cared less.

I rented this film because I believe wholeheartedly in its message, but I just can't give a 'thumbs up' to the way that message was delivered.

I'm sure if you are more patient and can deal with such disjointed story-telling, this might be a great film for you. But if you enjoy your films to be more linear and comprehensible, you might want to pass on this on.

One other point: A film like this takes hundreds (thousands?) of people and tons of equipment -- all transported to various locales via ... you guessed it ... gas guzzling vehicles. Somehow it seems ironic to me that good-intentioned people add to the problem while purporting to publicize it.