Dir. Liz Friedlander, US, 2006, 117 min
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Dante Basco, Laura Benanti, Rob Brown, Yaya DaCosta, Jenna Dewan, John Ortiz, Marcus T Paulk, Alfre Woodard
Review by Miguel Sopena
Once you find out about the real Pierre Dulaine and his American Ballroom Theater Company, which started teaching ballroom dancing to 11-year-old New York schoolchildren in 1994, it's hard not to dismiss Take the Lead, the heavily remade screen version first conceived by producers Diane Nabatoff and Michelle Grace, as just another Hollywood rip-off of a real-life story with a view to making sexy, trendy, 'inspirational' commercial cinema. However, and thanks to a sensitively crafted script, competent performances and Liz Friedlander's judicious direction, this turns out to be a genuinely engaging watch with a terrific soundtrack and a highly enjoyable dance component.
Pierre Dulaine's and Yvonne Marceau's initiative Dancing Classrooms, kickstarted with a single 30-student class but which had reached 68 schools and 8,000 pupils by 2004, had already been the protagonist of the 2004 documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, written and directed by first-timers Marylin Agrello and Amy Sewell. Agrello and Sewell had been inspired by the transformation operated on the pre-teen students by the new mandatory class, and by a style of dancing radically different from anything they would normally had encountered growing up in the streets of New York. This same approach was chosen for Take the Lead by Nabatoff, Grace, their New Line backers and writer Dianne Houston, who had been chosen to pen the script. The team's prompt decision to 'deal with more mature issues' resulted in a storyline featuring troublesome inner-city teenagers barely kept under control by no-nonsense high school principal Augustine James (Woodard). James can barely believe her eyes when swanlike, impeccably-mannered ballroom instructor Dulaine (Banderas) glides into her office with a proposal to teach James's charges, and when she asks him to take care of a group of particularly disruptive pupils placed in detention she thinks she's got rid of the bizarre stranger for good. However, and from seemingly disastrous beginnings, Dulaine's students come to appreciate the skills he has to teach them, fuse his style with their own hip-hop rhythms and make it all the way to a breathtaking citywide competition (Incidentally, students from the original Dancing Classrooms also take place in a New York-wide contest, held every year in June).
The choice of slightly older protagonists allows for all manner of romantic and rite-of-passage subplots to be explored alongside the dance-rich nucleus of the story. Race and class barriers are torn down, sexual stereotypes challenged, a new respect flourishes between partners and mutual aversion turns into love, all through the magic of music, teamwork and close bodily contact. Nothing terribly original perhaps, maybe, but Houston's natural, down-to-earth style manages to stay clear of sentimentality, and thanks to the clever way dance and music are woven into the plot and serve a dramatic function Take the Lead remains compelling viewing all the way through.
The film's soundtrack spans an eclectic range from the Gershwins, Cole Porter and classic tango, which form Dulaine's natural territory, to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, LL Cool J, DMX and the many other hip-hop artists the high school students would rather dance to when they first meet him. Choreographer JoAnn Jansen and her assistants have put together some terrific, nicely varied dance sequences, and Friedlander's extensive experience as a music video director shows in the movie's great pace and razor-sharp editing. If music and dance get even a little into your bloodstream this is a movie sure to make an impression.
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Entertainment In Video have announced the UK Region 2 DVD release of Take the Lead for 11th September 2006 priced at £19.99.
Extras include:
- Director’s Commentary
- Deleted Scenes
- Behind the Scenes
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