Un-original, un-inspiring, typically dreary, dull and predictable British melodrama.

Rating: Null/10 (16 October 2000)

The Emperor has no clothes.
I stand, terrified, at the lip of the yawning chasm of unreality that separates us from this film. I know it's a vain hope, given the weight of popular opinion, but someone should point out how mediocre this film really is, how little it has to say about life in general, and how much less about real life in England in the 1980s.
At home in the UK it has been hyped as the new "Full Monty", much like every new home-grown film that isn't the new "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". Now, if memory serves, "The Full Monty" was a comedy, so did I just fall asleep and miss the joke? This film is a dull, predictable, parochial melodrama about a self-obsessed, untalented child who lays waste to the lives of those around him, set against a background of grim, working class calamity worn to cliche by overuse. Oh ha ha ha. Stop, please, I can't breathe.
If you've been watching British movies over the last 5 years you'd be forgiven for thinking the only socially, historically significant event here since the end of World War 2 was the 1984 Miner's Strike. On the bright side, obviously, it meant the plucky if sexually frustrated men of our nation could rise to the challenge of adversity with a host of quirky alternative lifestyles, from stripping, or playing in a brass band, to re-painting the electricity pylons that stride across our rolling countryside. The British film industry has subjected hundreds of thousands of us to this grim procession of increasingly overwrought and improbable stories, the least and hopefully last of which is this strange fairy-tale of a graceless, limply homo-erotic ballet dancer and his cartoon grotesque family.
It's a "timeless" story, in the worst possible sense. Even with the home advantage for cultural references, I couldn't tell when it was supposed to be set. The cobbled streets and narrow back-alleys of the "Northern" town setting have become all-purpose visual shorthand for the deprived English working class from any time since the Victorians. Billy and his brother listen to mid-70s T. Rex the way kids do only to contemporary pop. The house is decorated in drab 70s kitsch, and the kids' clothes are straight out of a 70s revival costume grab-bag. The boys look very fey in their tight T-shirts, which I'm sure is the effect they were looking for, but they're jarringly out of time.
You can't blame the writer for the way the set was dressed, but who else takes responsibility for the one-dimensional characters? It's become an easy refuge for "serious" British screenwriters to surround a young central character with surly, bitter adult men, physically brutal with no verbal or emotional vocabulary, and sexually frustrated, ironic women. Every older man here is a grim, taciturn, proud, homophobic drunk. There's no scope for subtle character playing, all emotion arises out of frustration and confrontation, so most family arguments just play at the HIGHEST POSSIBLE VOLUME. Even Julie Walters takes refuge here when called on to be anything more than ironically brusque.
The children are emotionally and sexually liberated, something their parents either don't believe or can't understand. This is less an analysis of the hot-house maturity of modern children, particularly since this is a "historical" tale set in the 70s or 80s, than a springboard for some cheap thrills and laughs. The dance teacher's equally pre-pubescent daughter suggests, "I'll show you me fanny" - hopefully dubbed to "pussy" in the U.S. so viewers didn't miss the point - and what were we supposed to make of their sexy pre-teen-on-pre-teen pillow fight and feathery fondling? Billy's best friend, the 11 year old son of a transvestite, puts on his sister's dress, paints Billy with make-up and tries to kiss him. I'm sure the writer found these moments edgy and confrontational, rather than either lame or salacious.
Finally, at the heart of the film, the dance sequences are laughable. The young actor has neither style or grace, and the budget apparently didn't run to a choreographer. What we're presented with might be charming from a dearly loved 8 year old, but you wouldn't expect a major dance institution to take it seriously. The black kid in "Fame" who aces the auditions as O.J. Simpson getting into an elevator in "Towering Inferno" is more convincing.
This isn't a great and life-affirming film, it's a tired and dull re-tread of a very old story. Billy is an unpleasant character, leaving a trail of broken spirits and humiliation in his wake. He breaks his father's spirit completely, forced to compromise every principle, reduced to tears and humiliated in front of his work-mates, and patronised by the alien life forms at the Royal Ballet School. Two of his peers fling their budding sexuality at his feet, he teases both and casts one aside without a thought. The ballet teacher is, ultimately, used and cast aside too. Her rejection at the first audition is thoughtless, his half-hearted attempt to thank her later pitiful, and the bitter emptiness of her disappointment as they part is clear. This is echoed and magnified in the final scene, when she is excluded from his success.
Oh ha ha ha. Please, please stop. I can't stand it.