In Take the Lead, Hollywood’s version of Dulaine’s story, those fifth-graders from varied socio-economic backgrounds become teenagers from disadvantaged, one-note families. After witnessing one of the troubled teens take a baseball bat to his principal’s car, Dulaine (Antonio Banderas) decides that, rather than report the young man to the authorities, he will teach him and his classmates to dance.
From the beginning, then, we see the distrust at work. The filmmakers don’t believe we’ll buy a man who chooses to use his talent to help his community of his own volition, so they contrive some dramatic impetus that is not nearly as interesting (or inspiring) as reality.
They also place totally unnecessary barriers in Dulaine’s way. Rather than collaborating with a principal friend to create the program, as the real Dulaine did, Banderas must overcome a skeptical headmistress (Alfe Woodard) and jealous faculty members who try to use the PTA to shut him down.
Finally, and perhaps most egregiously, Friedlander and Nabatoff don’t trust the graceful, invigorating expressions of ballroom to appeal to new-millennial audiences (which, given the popularity of “Dancing with the Stars,” was a very bad bet).
Instead, Dulaine’s dancers fuse formal steps with hip-hop so that, at the final competition, they can produce the tired effect of “well, I never” responses from their traditionalist competitors.
Take the Lead still boasts a certain amount of predictable appeal. Banderas and the young actors work wonders with the formula so that we can’t help but feel for the challenges the fictional kids face. The alcoholism, prostitution, larceny, and vandalism that permeate their lives are affecting, but they’re also a cheap way to wring emotion from a film that didn’t need to court pity from middle class audiences.
I’m not one of those critics who subscribe to the idea that reality must be followed no matter what the cost to entertainment—if the inspirational material behind an “inspired by a true story movie” needs some sprucing, by all means, spruce. But here, reality is violated for no other purpose than to make the script more conventional, and thus, boring.
Not many feel-good movies (intentionally forgetting Kindergarten Cop) have been produced about elementary-age kids. Rather than capitalize on that gap to offer audiences something new, Take the Lead gives us yet another Coach Carter, Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, with a bit of Flash Dance thrown in for good measure.