external ballet

Rating: Null/10 (2 October 2008)

This is a teen movie. This means it works under strict formulas, ruled by market and by what the big bosses of Hollywood think teenagers want. There is a big contradiction behind the majority of these teens movies.: In most cases (this is no exception) these films tell stories of people who try to outdo themselves. These characters try to make special things, to get over the underdeveloped environments (socially, culturally, economically) from which they come from. So, ordinary people trying to reach special goals, trying to be special people. But than, all these films are perfectly ordinary, made massively, one copying the other, with absolutely nothing special beyond any of them. This one doesn't totally enter that kind of film for one redeeming element, but it practically does it.
Here, the female character is someone whose attempt to grab her personal dreams led her (in her view) to a personal downfall, her male match is someone who fits perfectly the stereotype i described above. The matching of one against the other and the conflict this generates is mildly interesting, though not enough to take the film out of its vulgarity. The redeeming element is how dance is used to illustrate this contradiction. Ballet vs hip-hop, internal vs external forms of expression. I frankly thought Julia Stiles didn't go well in this part. She was strangely stiff and uneasy. She has a sober way of acting, but here it sounds like if she wasn't quite sure of how to express, like if she couldn't "dance". Yet the idea of placing dance as a displayer of characters attitudes towards their reality and what happened/may happen to them was interesting. The overall product was quite flawed.
My opinion: 2/5 interesting concept
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