Ballerina Blues

 

 

I have written, deleted, and written again a review on this movie. There’s so many things I could pick apart but then I realized this is not a film that the detail oriented adult or older child would appreciate. Once I accepted that, I can look past my own annoyances and more freely appreciate it as a general message for the younger audience. I will try not to go back to my adult mind in this review, the one that appreciates a film that doesn’t ignore historical details. However, I cannot promise that my irritations wont creep through from time to time. Here we go.

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT – D

It is apparent that this film will not warrant award status with the likes of Disney and DreamWorks but in a weird way I was relieved in believing that it wasn’t trying to either. From a pre-teen point of view, this is a typical life-lessons story about making your dreams come true through hard work and determination. The plot is very predictable yet too rushed for essential character development. For that, I give it a D. It had all the tools necessary to earn a B but in the hour-and-a-half haste of achieving the dance goal, it failed miserably in achieving the suspense from the characters. For instance, Felicie (Elle Fanning) and her best friend Victor (Dane DeHaan) are runaways from an orphanage. We don’t know their ages or their reasons for escaping when they did. Eric Summer and Éric Warin’s Fench-Canadian animation completely dropped the ball on that. Were they frequent escapees?  Were conditions so bad they couldn’t take it any more?  Are they 10? 18? It is what it is I guess and the ticket buyers are not supposed to question these nonsense details right? I suppose when our kids ask us later why Felicie and Victor ran away from home, we can just make up whatever teaching opportunity we want. We should probably begin with something like running away is bad, kids. Don’t do it. And don’t steal other people’s identity either. That’s bad too. These two lead voices needed character and story development. The other characters can slide because they are basically adversarial props anyway. But if you are going to run away to chase a dream and commit identity theft along the way, we deserve to know it’s for heroic reasons. #ImAnnoyed  Ok, moving right along.

PLOT OVERVIEW – C+

Dreaming of being a ballet starlet, Felicie Milliner escapes her orphanage and fraudulently insinuates herself into an aspiring ballet group by faking that she’s someone else, learning her craft in a series of short montages as she competes to perform at the Grand Opera House. As her best friend Victor stirs up trouble in his own quest to become a master inventor – taking a job at Gustave Eiffel’s engineering studio no less – Felicie tackles adversity and adversaries to make her own dream come true. Again, in the time frame of the film this is rushed. No one goes from being a beginner dancer to a ballerina in a weeks time. Although the positive message of determination is there, it misses the mark on how much hard work, setbacks, and time is needed to achieve this. I suspect there will be hundreds of 7-year-olds begging for ballet classes after this film, full of hope, who will become discouraged by their lack of progress at the ripe old age of 7 1/2 or when they see a better movie like Moana, whichever comes first. Ballerina only really stands out on the dance front. It’s a fluffy animated version of Center Stage On Pointe (Dance Mom’s alum Chloe Lukasiak) meets Karate Kid. Ultimately there’s little to detour the plot from precisely what you would expect from this kind of production and the Disney magic is missing.

VOICE ACTORS – C

Ballerina’s voice actors are well-suited for their animated cohorts, but the younger actors are slightly over-the-top on occasion, suggesting that they’re yet to perfect the type of exaggerated realism evident within animation’s most beloved characters. They inject just barely enough believability into their characters to ensure that the audiences aren’t too excruciatingly uncomfortable whenever they appear on-screen. But if you’re 6 or 8 you won’t notice anyway. Featuring the voice talents of Elle Fanning as the main character Felicie,  Dane DeHaan as Victor, best friend, fellow dreamer and orphan mate to Felicie, singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen as her mystery mentor Odette, a maid with secret dance skills, and Dance Moms alum Maddie Ziegler as the bratty snotty dancer Camille with a vicious, fame hungry mom, who will sabotage anyone who gets in her daughter’s way (A smidgen of art imitating life for Dance Moms fans and the perfect role for which Sia offered up her muse while doing soundtrack work for the film). The viciously biting commentary of Félicie’s dance teacher and the way he likens his student’s dance ability to that of a large animal provides some much-needed comic relief. The Russian ballerinas, who speak enough English to give clarity to their thoughts, are delightful, engaging, and very relatable.

Ballerina may have been in a straightforward rush in its plotting and execution but it’s got all the right ingredients to thoroughly inspire on the dance front, despite the overkill on failed slapstick humor and inexperienced voice actors. With real-life ballet masters on hand to lend their skills behind the scenes, the ballet work is stunning and captivating. Although there are some impressive CG animation throughout, rendering the 1870s Parisian period locales (complete with half-built Eiffel Tower) with loving attention to detail on architecture, it’s the dance moves that truly stand out. All in all, while Ballerina isn’t perhaps as powerful as Frozen or it’s current competitor Moana, it is still a well-written screenplay pushing a message that every child should probably hear at least a few times within their lifespan: to get what you want – persevere and push through no matter how silly you may feel. You’ll either get to where you want to be, or you won’t, but one thing is clear – you’ll come out stronger than you were before you started.

 But (like me) if the modern infusions placed haphazardly in a 19th century French setting –  modern clothes, modern music, some modern technology – makes you want to bury your face in your hands and walk out after 5 minutes, no one would blame you. You can guess how it’s going to end anyway.