Take the Lead Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)April 5th, 2006
TAKE THE LEAD
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ** 1/2
Even if it brags that it was "inspired by a true story, TAKE THE LEAD is a formula film from start to finish. Streetwise, but not really bad, inner city kids are taken under the wing of a caring teacher who teaches them dance moves that might allow them to win in the end-of-the-movie, big dance competition. Of course, the central character will have something -- a crime he just has to commit -- which will prevent him from competing in the big dance. Hold the line, it looks like he'll make it just in the nick of time. If that isn't a by-the-numbers script, I don't know what is. The movie tries its best to make MAD HOT BALLROOM into THE BREAKFAST CLUB combined with SAVE THE LAST DANCE.
The story concerns a sexy ballroom dance teacher who takes it upon himself to teach "the rejects" in a ghetto school. Alfre Woodard plays the principal whose wall is full of pictures of her ex-students who died in fights or by using drugs. The principal, as you could probably guess, is one with a heart of gold, even if she barks out orders to her students like a drill instructor who has had way too much coffee.
Take a fat legal pad with you if you want to write down everything wrong with the narrative, including contrivances and improbabilities galore. But Antonio Banderas, with his sweet and graceful demeanor, almost manages to win you over anyway. Carefully underplaying his part as real-life ballroom dance teacher Pierre Dulaine, Banderas gives us one of his most charismatic performances. One of the opening sequences has him in a tux with tails riding on a bicycle down a New York City street. It is an unusual and intriguing visual.
The best moment in the movie comes when Pierre invites his hottest female student from his dance academy to the school to show the kids how exciting ballroom dancing can be. The kids find it all very sexy and immediately try hard to learn the dance moves that they had previously ridiculed as being old and stodgy.
But whether Banderas's charm and some choppily edited-and-shot ballroom dancing is enough to save this tired script is something you'll be wrestling with as you fidget in your seat in this overly long production. Along the way, Pierre has a homily a minute for his young charges, such as, "The waltz cannot be danced without trust between partners." We also learn the very politically correct lesson that guys do not "lead" in dancing. They merely "propose" and the girls choose whether or not to accept and follow. Gag.
The best part of the picture comes in the ending credits when the dancers are really allowed to cut loose without so much excessive editing and without the hackneyed back stories that the movie proper is so obsessed with. (We learn during the story that one mother is a whore, one dad is an alcoholic who refuses to work, etc. Albeit with good intentions, the plot is overstuffed, trying to tell too many stories.) I am always leery of any film in which one has to wait for the movie to be "over with" before the good part begins.
TAKE THE LEAD runs too long at 1:48. It is rated PG-13 for "thematic material, language and some violence" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, April 7, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
