BEFORE: Ah, here was the dilemma - how do I follow up "Bombshell", with a cast of hundreds, so many possible paths I could take - as I said yesterday, I first saw the easy path that would take me straight to "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" via Margot Robbie. I didn't want to take that easy path, because that would create too many wasted opportunities. Even color-mapping out all the possible paths I could take was no help, because I could have followed up today with another film that had Connie Britton, Malcolm McDowell, Alice Eve, Stephen Root - seriously, I had like 25 possible choices other than the one I'm making. So, what to do? The only way to figure something like this out, I've learned, is to have a destination in mind - in this case, it's Hitler's birthday Which path gets me to watch some World War II-related material on April 20? I played around with a lot of different possibilities before I found a very complicated path through the movies on my watchlist, and eventually found the right path, one that also gets me to where I need to be on Mother's Day, and in a few weeks I'll figure out the path to Father's Day, I've already got something of a rough head-start.
This choice also has another advantage, it gets me to watch two films that had previously been part of last October's schedule, but both got shelved in favor of more appropriate horror-themed material. So now those two films are back on the schedule, and getting crossed off my list. Now, the cast list is a bit questionable, because the IMDB and Wikipedia both point out that there are several versions of this film, and in some cases the European version (which is titled "Ballerina") uses different voices than the U.S. release. I had this same problem with "My Life as a Zucchini" a couple years ago. So I've got to figure out which version I saw, and whose voices were used. But one think I think I know for sure is that the voice of Kate McKinnon carries over from "Bombshell"
THE PLOT: An orphan girl dreams of becoming a ballerina and flees her rural Brittany for Paris, where she passes for someone else and accedes to the position of pupil at the Grand Opera House.
AFTER: Look, I'm trying to be kind here, but everything about this film seems like a bit of a mess. It's got two different titles, different voice casts for releases in different countries, and I haven't even gotten to the story problems yet. How the hell do you market something that has so many different versions? When I choose this one on Netflix, or order it on demand, or sit down to watch the DVD, what version am I watching? If a film is strong enough, it only needs to be made once, and the simple fact that some other actors had to come in and re-voice some characters, that means there were problems. Maybe some actors didn't sound "European" enough, or "American" enough, but those are problems that should have been solved in advance, at the casting stage. Or maybe you get a voice actor to record every line twice, once with a strong French accent, and one with no accent - any talented voice actor should be able to handle that. So it just feels like confusion across the board.
Now, let's get to that story. An orphaned girl in France has unrealistic dreams about becoming a ballerina. Yes, I said unrealistic - because I think a big problem with the way that we're raising children these days is that we tell them that they can do anything they want. Umm, sorry, no, they can't. A kid can grow up and do almost everything, but you just can't say "anything" - there's always that weird kid who wants to be a tree or an elephant, and come on, you've got to draw the line somewhere. The classic example is that we say that any kid can grow up to be President, and come on, we all know that's not true. We've proven over the last few primaries that the odds are stacked against anyone who isn't an old, white male with connections, right? So why do we give false hopes to inner city minority kids? Obama, right, but I don't think he's really the exception that proves the rule.
The truth is, kids, you're going to try a few different jobs when you're a teen and you may fail at a couple of them, and then slowly you're going to develop a certain skill set, or realize that you have an affinity for something, be it accounting or gardening or cooking, and then you'll get locked in to a certain dead-end career that you'll probably hate, and then you'll have a mid-life crisis, maybe change careers, there'll be some adjustments made, and then maybe a second career that you might also hate. True happiness comes from within, not from success as a ballerina or four-star chef or rock star or whatever. Eventually you'll realize that the impossible dream you had as a kid is just that, an impossible dream - someone's going to make it happen, that's a given, but it may not be you. Then you have to watch as someone else lives out your childhood fantasy, but if you're lucky you've built up the mental capacity to accept that reality, and a support system through which you find some kind of contentment. Just keeping it real.
Now, I don't really expect a children's film to adopt all that as its mantra, because it's complicated and doesn't really fit in a short synopsis, but all that rings truer to me than any sort of animated fantasy. "Leap!" ends up being like a Hollywood rom-com, by that I mean it has a "everything's going to work out" turn of events that I think has no reflection of the real world. I know, I know, let the kids have a few years before their dreams get crushed, but I think if we prepare them early, just maybe we can cushion the blow.
So, anyway, this orphan girl heads off for Paris, along with another orphan, Victor, who wants to become a famous inventor, or engineer, or something. He's got this set of wings that he built, that he thinks will enable him to fly, and now we're getting close to a metaphor, I think. Her dreams of being a famous ballet dancer are just as unrealistic as his dream to fly with mechanical wings - only wouldn't you know it, his wings (eventually) work. But again, I think this is a terrible idea, because personal flying wings DON'T work in the real world, why should we make kids think that they do? The worst-case scenario here is that a kid will go out and build their own wings, jump off of a roof, then get injured or die. How did this get approved as a story point? It's reckless and potentially dangerous! If that "Peter Rabbit" movie got in trouble for showing the main character attack the farmer with berries that he was allergic to, this film should have also come with a warning label!
I also have to take an issue with the fact that Felicie basically steals another girl's identity, just to get an audition for the ballet school. I mean, the plot dictates that she has to get into the school, because that will provide the character with a place to live, her meals, etc. She works her way in at first by helping out the cleaning woman, which is a message I can get behind, that hard work gets your foot in the door, but when she sees the opportunity to steal the "mean" girl's identity and her audition slot, she takes it - what kind of message does that send out to young girls, that's it's OK to step on someone else's dreams in pursuit of your own, especially if they were mean to you? Not cool.
Another irresponsible thing (apart from telling kids they can fly with mechanical wings, or they can be anything they want to be) is related to the character design. All of the ballerinas are depicted as very thin, like with very thin limbs, and giant heads. Really? Isn't there already enough pressure put on children to conform to some imaginary version of physical perfection, and aren't dancers (like ballerinas) under constant pressure to look thin, and doesn't this cause eating disorders in that line of work? Jesus, what the heck were they thinking? And how do these really thin bodies support those giant heads? Just irresponsible, across the board, I don't know what else to say.
Ah, the IMDB tells me that this movie was originally distributed in the U.S. by the Weinstein Company, and maybe that explains a lot. Quality control might have been lax, because that company was having a lot of problems relating to its chief executive being sued for sexual harassment? That explains some of the problems, perhaps, but I think story problems and casting problems run a bit deeper, you have to look back to the original animation company for those.
Also starring the voices of Elle Fanning (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Nat Wolff (last seen in "Home Again"), Maddie Ziegler (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Carly Rae Jepsen, Terrence Scammell, Mel Brooks (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Joe Sheridan (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Elana Dunkelman, Stephanie Sanditz.
RATING: 3 out of 10 pirouettes
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