Hyperreal

On Friday I went to see “Take The Lead”, a movie featuring Antonio Banderas in the role of a ballroom dance teacher who decides that teaching school kids to dance would be good for them. This tale is based on a true story, though clearly fictionalised, about Pierre Dulane. His dance program for school kids now covers New York, and is spreading out across America. It was also recently the subject of the film documentary “Mad Hot Ballroom” (I think they got the better title.)

The story is pretty weak, pretty much a re-hash of bad kids turned good thanks to inspirational teacher (c.f., e.g., Dangerous Minds), and few of the characters are particularly well developed beyond the obvious stereotypes. But this is a film about dancing, and it really hits the mark there.

OK, don’t expect to actually learn anything technical about dancing from this film… But the dancing was quite inspirational. The demonstration of Tango makes me want to learn it even more.

The music was also good. I wonder what the soundtrack CD has on it, because there’s so much good music to choose from. I’m sure we’ll all be sick of hearing it once it’s been played into the ground at every dance event for the next year though…

I’m curious about Banderas’ dancing though – and specifically how much of “his” dancing is actually him. Being Spanish, for some reason I’d expect him to be a dancer. In a couple of his previous films he has done same dancing – or at least appeared to…

But people tell me he isn’t actually a dancer, and that it wasn’t him dancing the Tango that we see. (And it is curious we see so little dancing from him – I’d expect more if he wanted to show off his dancing talent.) I also found a story that said that he and his wife (Melanie Griffith) were about to start dance lessons with the real-life Pierre Dulane.

If this is all true, and it really isn’t him, then it’s a shame.

But overall, I liked the film and based on the music and the dancing, I’d give this film ***½ (out of 5.)

Recommended.