Up With People meets a Michael Jackson fantasy

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2002)

If my summary conjured up positive emotions for you, then you will love this film. DO NOT READ FURTHER.
If, however, you just threw up in your mouth, then you may agree with me: Billy Elliot is a vacuous white elephant dripping with sap. I must say I disagree with all the negative reviews here on the IMDb. They all seem to zero in on the typical redneck "What the f*** would I want to watch ballet for?" I love the ballet. I also thought the acting in Billy Elliot was pretty good, especially the boy. What amazes me, especially from the Brits, is that more people didn't find this film horribly forced, and obvious. It felt to me like one of those Hallmark greeting cards with the vaselined lens and little girls dressing up in Mama's clothes. Everything was too perfect. Too on the head. And good Lord enthroned in eternal majesty in heaven above, if I have to be told one more time that it's okay to be a homosexual I will EAT my own head off. All right, I get it, he's not a poofter, not that there's anything wrong with that. I GET IT! MOVE ALONG!
The main thing I did not like about Billy Elliot was the on the head hammering of it's themes. I wanted to like it, but that one flaw was enough to ruin it for me. If you loved Private Ryan, then I guess you will never understand why I didn't like this film. However, if you understand why 'The Perfect Storm' left me no choice but go on a shooting spree at the local MacDonalds, then perhaps you can relate to my sentiments. Does that make me a bad person?
I love feel good films such as The Dish,Gigot, The Secret of Roan Inish, etc... Heck, my favorite film of all time is It's A Wonderful Life. But Billy Elliot had that all too familiar aroma of a media spin doctor telling me what I should and shouldn't believe. I also felt much of his dancing, excellent though he was, to be impossibly contrived. It's one thing to want to dance, it's another thing to 'gotta dance' but it's altogether and impossibly an inexplicable thing when, like in a deleted scene from 'Flashdance' a person must simply explode with dancing, start climbing walls, tap dancing down the street and skipping to my Lou all over the damn village. What's with the thrashing and wailing of the boy? I mean, how much angst can an eleven year old have? Which reminds me, didn't it seem in the least bit odd that this young boy was spouting off clairvoyant soliloquies like a 70 year old grandfather giving sage advice? I expect that sort of lapse in reality from American sitcoms, but, call me naive, I expect more from British cinema.
And finally a huge mistake to put in foul language to make this an 'R' rated film (in the States). It seemed deliberate on the part of the director to "toughen up" the feel. Like it's such a bad thing for the movie to be what it really is, a nice story about a kid that is different. Seeing as how the biggest target audience for this film would be families and youngsters, and considering the cursing does nothing to help the story, it could all be removed without compromising the film in the least, I'll wager it could have made an extra 100 million at the box office without the cussing. That's just plain stupid.