Plodding low budget drama about music and dreams - that was a surprise world hit.

Rating: 6/10 (2 April 2005)

Billy is a normal young kid from a normal 1980's mining town in the North East of England. However he finds that he prefers dancing to being hit on the nose at the local boxing club!
It says a lot about how poor modern cinema is that this bit of kitchen sink fluff took off and became a hit. The budget is obviously so low that even the real life props look fake! I don't know who ordered the "period" 1984 cars - but they shouldn't be in a job.
The plot is borrowed from every girls-only magazine published since the 1960's where the plucky little miss "wants to be a ballerina, but her mother won't let her." Only they have swapped the sexes around. Talk about old wine in new bottles.
There is nothing worse than not being charmed when all around you there are people that are. It is like being at a party and watching people get drunk, dance and kissing girls while you look on - long faced - from the corner. The general audience should be grateful that they don't know the North East, because if they did they would realise it is only a plastic version of it. It seems more like Yorkshire to me - but then I know these places better than most.
The use of endless four letters words - while not unrealistic - doesn't make it any more real and cuts across the point of the exercise. Who is the thing aimed at if not kids. Why shut people of Billy's age out? The thing measures out equal doses of dance, music, black comedy and social realism with a light gay undertone that I don't really understand. There isn't the depth and script to understand it. It looks like a bolt-on to try and sell it to gay audiences.
The sideline acting is vary passable apart from Julie Walters who clunks around in a boiler suit looking like a baby elephant. Is this supposed to be funny? Who knows. Someone, somewhere told the world that this woman has some kind of special talent - and the world seem to have gone along with it.
(Don't get me wrong - she can act a bit, but seems to pop up like bad penny in every Brit pic ever made.)
Naturally people evolve and change their opinion to become better and more rounded people - because that is what people do in movies. Billy is only made a loser so that he can be transformed in to a winner before our eyes.
Lead Jamie Bell seems a nice enough kid though - it will be interesting to see if he is anything more than a flash in the pan though. Despite being star of the show here it takes more to make it in showbiz than a bit of cod Irish dancing - the fact is that I thought his footwork was strictly chorus material.