Common Sense Note
Parents should know that this film includes some images of violence, as well as references to painful past deaths (two kids' siblings were killed in gang violence). A frustrated boy smashes his principal's car with a bar; a gun is drawn near the film's end, and a crew who deals drugs and stolen materials beats up their reluctant member (some blood visible on his face, as he finally makes it to the ballroom competition). The dancing is sometimes very formal, often very sexualized (especially the tango, salsa, and hip-hop moves). Characters deal drugs, threaten violence, smoke cigarettes, and drink.
Families can talk about the options available for the dance students. How might their dance training help them in other aspects of their lives (getting a job, looking after children and parents, continuing their educations)? How does the film set up a connection between their home-life conflicts and their work in the dance class?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Well-meaning and energetic, TAKE THE LEAD stars Antonio Banderas as a New York ballroom dancing teacher. As Pierre, Banderas is fabulous in snug dancing pants and he charms his way into his high school detention class students' righteously resentful hearts. He's first stymied, then embraced by the flinty-then-warm principal (Alfre Woodard, who played this part already in Radio). As Pierre contemplates methods to "reach" his hard-knock-life students, he looks alternately thoughtful and devastatingly charming in close-ups, and painstaking in his longer, dance-moves shots.
Though his students -- assigned to detention hall for various infractions -- resist his initial efforts to "express themselves" through dance (and especially, disdain his romantic oldies music), they do come to appreciate his dedication, and the fact that he brings in one of his upscale, white, and very snobby students, Morgan (professional dancer Katya Virshilas), to show the proper execution of the tango. The boys' eyes predictably pop ("It's like sex on hardwood!") and the girls appreciate Morgan's deft athleticism.
The film gives Pierre one particularly hard-case student, Rock (the very good Rob Brown, who followed a similar trajectory in Finding Forrester, only there his gifts were more conventional: basketball and writing). They test one another, learn to trust one another, and come up with a mutually respectful relationship by film's end.
While Rock is "developed" in relation to several characters, most of the students never get out from under their initial thumb-nailing. Rock's romantic object, Lahrette (former Top Model contestant Yaya DaCosta, who acquits herself well), is joined by a slew of stereotypes: wigger, neck-roller, shy girl, overweight boy. These easy designations allow the movie to point to but never examine in detail the students' complex lives and "issues" -- abusive moms' boyfriends, murdered siblings, neighborhood bullies and drug dealers -- but they're resolved in the fiction more simplistically than are the younger kids' dilemmas in the documentary.
Music video director Liz Friedlander's fiction film skews older than last year's documentary Mad Hot Ballroom (though both are inspired by the same NYC program), and features more acrobatic camerawork and slicker editing. This means the movie grants the kids an inevitable endpoint: a dance competition where they combine hip-hop and ballroom strategies to impress the tuxedoed judges. The dancing is fun, especially as the students incorporate their own hip-hop stylings into their lessons. But, as even the students note in an aside designed to preempt exactly this criticism, the Michelle Pfeiffer plot is corny. Even the diligent, compassionate widower Pierre gets a girlfriend by the end.
Families who enjoy this movie should also see the engaging documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, the dance-themed Save the Last Dance, or films where teachers inspire students, like Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, and To Sir With Love.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentDancing is often sexualized (especially tango, salsa, and some hip-hop styles); an older man tries to seduce his girlfriend's adolescent daughter; romantic kissing by featured high school couple; the sight of an interracial couple dancing upsets white girl's mother. |
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ViolenceMovie includes several violent scenes, including an opening fistfight at a high school dance; an attack on a car with a bar; boy pulls a gun at the end and is beaten by his angry crew (slightly bloody imagery here). |
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LanguageMild language by kids and also by the principal (dance teacher is very proper): one f-word; a couple of uses of s-word, "hell," and "damn," plus gender/sexual slang ("punk ass," "p---y," "ass") and other colorful phrasing ("screwed up," "I suck"). |
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Social BehaviorKids fight, resist authority, behave sullenly in repsonse to dance teacher's entreaties; teacher's bicycle is stolen (and at film's end, replaced); kids learn mutual respect; widowed teacher learns to open his heart to romance. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoOne boy's parents are alcoholics; another deals drugs; reference to "crack dealer." |
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