| Mad Hot Ballroom, Marilyn Agrelo's delightful documentary set in the public school system of New York City, chronicles the lives of a dozen or so sixth-graders as they participate in a 10-week ballroom dance course. Introduced to the school system in 1994 by ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine, today more than 6,000 students participate, culminating in a citywide competition.
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| Take the Lead, on the other hand, helmed by hot video director and first-time feature filmmaker Liz Friedlander is an extremely loose adaptation of the work of Mr. Dulaine, now the central character of the film. And why wouldn't he be front and center, considering he is being played the dashing Antonio Banderas. Unlike its documentary counterpart, Take the Lead is set in a much grittier, stereotypical inner-city environment, where drive-bys, gang turf wars and felony burglaries are considered just part of the growing up process.
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| Where Mad Hot Ballroom celebrates the sweetness, awkwardness and eventual graceful awakenings of its juvenile dance contenders, Take the Lead's students are hardened, |
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| formulaic urbanized high schoolers forced into this dance program as a form of punishment for various acts of delinquency. Right away, both the innocence and humor that is key to the true-life story, is lost. What we are left with are a bunch of 22-year-old actors trying to portray 17-year-olds with a couth and likeness more akin to inmates at a criminal detention center than any genuine high schoolers. The tough veneers make for a lack of tenderness between the fictional characters, which is exactly what makes their 12-year-old counterparts in the documentary so irresistible and easy to root for. It is a shame that the professional screenwriters of Take the Lead could not match the completely unscripted, witty and intelligent remarks made by the children of Mad Hot Ballroom, some of whom are growing up in actual, rather than Hollywood's version of, poverty. Can you believe there wasn't a single drive-by during the entire year it took to shoot the documentary?
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| The only plot similarity between the films is the climax, as both pictures lead up to the inevitable dance competition finals. For the contenders of Mad Hot Ballroom, the suspense builds |
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