A waste of a good idea

Rating: 5/10 (5 January 2016)

In my personal experience, most films that have come with a lot of hype and where critics have waxed lyrically of them I have found somewhat disappointing. Unfortunately, for me, Billy Elliott falls into that category.
Not that it is a bad film. one of the problems I have is as with so many British and American films of today, it lacks depth in as much as instead of discussing it's subject, it presents it in an exploratory manner where we see its facade but not entirely what is behind it.
Stephen Daldry's film tells the story, with a script by Lee Hall, of a young boy (Jamie Bell) who during a boxing practicing session, witnesses a group of girls being instructed in ballet by dancing tutor Mrs Wilkinson (Julie Walters) which inspires him to take an interest in the discipline.
Wilkinson hands him a pair of ballet shoes ( which just happened to be the right size) and invites him to join in. Having developed such a keen interest, and not wanting to upset his apparently bigotry father ( Gary Lewis) Billy decides to cautiously take up the offer.
After successfully concealing for some time his newly found ambition from his family, his father finally discovers him in one of Wilkinson's lessons and interrupts the class to display his displeasure,much to the annoyance of Wilkinson.
His fathers use of bigotry is for me, A major let down in the film because While it is perfectly acceptable to have an opinion on a given situation or person, the belief of a bigot is usually unreasonable, unfair, biased and without research or foundation. It is because of that criteria we are left with a somewhat shallow film in which instead of going deep into the subject and discussing it thoroughly and therefore making it rich in dialogue, (and such film making today is possible, even in Hollywood. Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight are prime examples) we are left with a vehicle where the father's narrow-mindedness forms a big part of the families dysfunction.
Hall's decision to portray the dad as a (striking) miner was Unnecessary as was the grandmothers dementia. The character's pre occupation with the sub plots(and even they did not have much depth) distracted from the main subject in hand.
His father finally comes round to the idea of Billy becoming a ballet dancer. It is another part of the films weakness that it does this without any qualified link between the father being anti and pro.Apart from Billy's impromptu thirst for ballet, there was not that much inspiration in the story to warrant him auditioning for and being accepted in its school.
Several years later Billy is a young adult (Played by Adam Cooper)(It's amazing that Billy and mike aged while the father hadn't) fully fledged as a ballet dancer and performing in Swan Lake.
Bell, Lewis, and Walters played their respective parts convincingly, and did their best with what little they were given, as did all the other actors, but the film was sadly let down by lazy script writing and lack of depth in the characters. This is by no means the fault of the actors but that of the creative team who came up with a good idea and then watered it down with a total lack of character study.