Take The Lead (DVD)

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"Take the Lead" manages to take every dance/inspirational movie cliché and integrate them effortlessly into its two hour running time. This isn´t a great film, but it isn´t a terrible one either. It has its charm, mainly found in the actors and the scenes involving the hybridized dancing and music that the characters conjure up by mashing old danceable jazz tunes with new flavored hip-hop. The musical concoction seems like it might not work but it does and ultimately helps many of the dance scenes from being like everything else that´s come before. If only the rest of the film where that way.

Antonio Banderas stars as Pierre Dulaine, an internationally acclaimed ballroom dancer who decides to donate his time to teach dance to the troubled youth of some of New York´s inner city schools. The rest is what you´d expect as Dulaine finds himself with a crop of teenagers who don´t exactly take to his methods right away. He´s ballroom, they´re hip-hop of course they´re going to clash. After a few failed attempts, they finally take to each other, but only after Dulaine invites one of his well-versed dance students to perform with him in front of the troubled teens. They dance the tango and instantly catch their attention. The movement is passionate and full of life, as most the dance scenes in this film are. It´s the scenes in between that are the problem.

The scenario has been played out so many times before that it´s difficult to make this kind of material work. Banderas is charismatic as an actor but his Dulaine is such an affable fellow with little, if no other, desire than to teach dance that he seems all too aloof at times. Banderas does what he can with the role but it offers little in the way inspirational gravitas. On the other hand, the "teens" in the film played by the likes of Rob Brown ("Coach Carter"), Dante Basco ("Biker Boyz"), Yaya DaCosta ("America´s Next Top Model"), and Lyriq Bent ("Saw II"), among others, have some nice moments with each other including a would be couple who´s brothers where involved in a gangland shootout killing one of them. Underlying resentments bubble up when the two are paired together by Dulaine and, as expected, love blooms between the two.

A love triangle involving Jenna Dewan, Basco and Bent ends in a wonderfully choreographed dance sequence that acts as the films climax, which is more than is expected from the subplot. The problem is that we spend so little time with any of these characters that we really don´t care. There are so many characters to keep track of and the characterization so thin, that the films is like an action film where the dramatic scenes in between seem like they´re there only to get us to the next big dance sequence.

The film´s opening is intriguing. Opening with a cross-cut set of scenes contrasting the two styles of music and dance that are about to meet head on through the course of the film. Set to a remixed version of Lena Horne´s "I Got Rhythm" featuring Q-Tip (formerly of influential hip-hop group "A Tribe Called Quest"), the scenes are a nice blend of old and new styles, making for an exciting beginning to the film. The film´s opening gusto isn´t surprising considering director Liz Friedlander´s background in music videos. It would have been interesting to see how the rest of the film had played out had Friedlander adapted this same philosophy even to more mundane scenes.