First off, my girlfriend looooved this movie. She's a dance fanatic (we met at a swing dance thing) and she thought it was wonderful and inspirational and all that.
As for me, I thought it was cute. But I felt it relied on the cuteness of the kids too much. Young kids dancing are funny because they look a little clunky dancing, and interviews with them are amusing because they have this weird half adult/half kid view of the world, but that in itself isn't enough to make something a great movie.
I felt the film lacked a real flow. The best documentaries structure a story, but Ballroom is all incident instead. Some incidents are amusing, as when a boy is partnered with a girl who looked to be two fee taller than him, but other incidents suffer from a lack of context. One argumentative boy is once forced to apologize and once refuses to dance with a particular girl, but we have no idea why in either case. The movie tells us that the dance program can better these kids lives but it doesn't really show that happening. The result is a movie that is generally entertaining but that has little real impact.
I am happy that kids are learning to ballroom dance, since that may help keep ballroom dancing alive and give me people to dance with in future. But in spite of that good message, the movie itself squanders a lot of its potential.
But then, my girlfriend ecstatically gives it a 9.5/10 (she gives it the extra .5 because she's taken classes with one of the teachers in the film). So we sat side by side and saw a different movie.
As for me, I thought it was cute. But I felt it relied on the cuteness of the kids too much. Young kids dancing are funny because they look a little clunky dancing, and interviews with them are amusing because they have this weird half adult/half kid view of the world, but that in itself isn't enough to make something a great movie.
I felt the film lacked a real flow. The best documentaries structure a story, but Ballroom is all incident instead. Some incidents are amusing, as when a boy is partnered with a girl who looked to be two fee taller than him, but other incidents suffer from a lack of context. One argumentative boy is once forced to apologize and once refuses to dance with a particular girl, but we have no idea why in either case. The movie tells us that the dance program can better these kids lives but it doesn't really show that happening. The result is a movie that is generally entertaining but that has little real impact.
I am happy that kids are learning to ballroom dance, since that may help keep ballroom dancing alive and give me people to dance with in future. But in spite of that good message, the movie itself squanders a lot of its potential.
But then, my girlfriend ecstatically gives it a 9.5/10 (she gives it the extra .5 because she's taken classes with one of the teachers in the film). So we sat side by side and saw a different movie.