Pretty solid

Rating: 7/10 (14 August 2001)

Why someone described this movie as funny (testimonial on movie poster) is beyond me, unless they typically find stories about poverty stricken miners, dead mothers, and labor turmoil to be humorous. Billy Elliot is a good movie, but it is not the funny, heartwarming movie experience I expected. Heartwarming maybe, funny at times, but this should not be a prime descriptor of the film.
The acting is quite good, the characters are believable and interesting, and the story is charming. I especially enjoyed the sub-plot of the labor unrest, and felt that it gave the film a depth it otherwise would not have had. And this is perhaps where the film fails somewhat in my opinion--in it's effort to tell a story about a boy's struggle to be able to dance the "ballee", the movie only glances at the bigger struggle, and the bigger story, of the miners' union's struggle against management. As much as I like a story about triumph over adversity, it's hard to get too emotionally concerned about a boy's desire to dance when hundreds of working class families are fighting for wages that will feed their children, never mind send them to dance school.
I rate the movie a 7 out of 10. It is unquestionably a well done movie, but I ultimately found the priorities of storytelling misplaced, and that hampered the entertainment factor.