Formulaic.

Rating: 6/10 (8 May 2001)

Billy Elliot wasn't a bad movie. It just followed a formula too closely for my liking. The formula is: A child from a poor ignorant family gets involved in an activity not usually associated with his socioeconomic class. The family doesn't understand or approve so the activity is done on the sly. A wise teacher recognizes the child's talent and encourages the activity. The child has a chance to display his talent to someone of influence but a family crisis threatens to wreck the talented child's chances. The ignorant parent becomes enlightened at the last moment and they hurriedly show up before the influential person who sees the child's talent and saves the day. This movie has been made many times before. There were no surprises in this retelling. I felt some of the scenes were very contrived and didn't make sense given the scenes that preceded them. There was a lack of emotional and character continuity. Billy liked ballet but he wasn't gay. That point was blatantly made. Why? Why couldn't he be gay? That would have given the movie a twist. Maybe the demographics of the prospective paying audience would not like the main character to be gay so he likes ballet but isn't gay. A gay character was included to show how tolerant and understanding Billy could be but in another scene he is shown to be crude and brutal. Also the demographics would dictate a rock music background so at a climatic moment the Swan Lake music is introduced but quickly replaced with some mediocre rock song. It made no sense. The cursing was also too much. The movie was rated R because of it. I would think the target audience would be families and younger people that the R rating would exclude. If mature audiences were the target group why have such a bland sweet story. A loss of a big audience just so you can say the eff word. It makes no sense.