Could have been a lot better

Rating: Null/10 (2 January 2003)

I quite liked Billy Elliot. It had comedy, drama and elements of the truth which all British films SHOULD have. Set around the miners strike a young boy discovers he prefers ballet dancing to boxing. So he takes up lessons, well against his fathers and brother Tony's feelngs. It showed the crisis of the stike well, but i felt it had something missing. Compared to other British films (such as in recent years, The Full Monty, Brassed Off and When Saturday Comes), Billy Elliot seems to be missing an important element that gives the characters a sympathetic feeling that we saw in the the others. All of them are set around the mining community in the north, and they all show the terrible consequences of working in the mines. In the Full Monty, they are all out of work. In Brassed Off, the mine is about to be closed down, and in When Saturday Comes, the pit collapses. In this film, they are on strike. I'm afraid Billy Elliot did not make me feel as much for the characters as the others did.