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Mad Hot Ballroom
: This is truly a feel-good movie. It really hit home with me as a teacher, but there is a lesson there for everyone as we watch these kids learn about life through dance. I laughed, I cried, and at the end, the audience applauded! How many movies have you been to lately when that happened? I can't wait for it to come out on DVD. It's a must-have for my movie collection.
Mad Hot Ballroom is not only different from other films because it is a documentary. It differs greatly from pretty much all the documentaries I have seen because it is populated by teachers and 5th graders who begin the story completely honest and ordinary. From there they progress in a rather ordinary fashion to - something extraordinary. There are no Michael Jordans or Tiger Woods' or Oprah Winfreys. But there are large numbers (we're told about 6,000 per year) of elementary school kids, many who live in neighborhoods with 97% poverty. This film takes place over just a few months, but you can see these young kids transforming before your eyes. In neighborhoods where they are more likely to wind up in prison than in college, you can see them stepping away from mediocrity and towards lives that you can just sense will be productive. Since these kids aren't even in High School yet we can't say with certainty how they will turn out - but I bet a "where are they now" documentary 10 years from now will show many of these kids still on the "right track".
New York took a small ballroom dancing program and turned it into a mandatory exercise for 5th graders. Remember your own life at that time - how you'd rather touch kryptonite than the hand of someone of the opposite sex and their "kooties". Yet these children are led by dedicated teachers who come to identify with their students in a way that makes them think of them as "their" kids.
The early dancing scenes are pretty humorous in their pre-pubescent awkwardness. As happens in 10-12 year olds, many of the girls are a half-foot taller than the boys. They move with a clumsy physical immaturity that is not graceful. But you can see something else - they LIKE it. They learn dedication, so an endeavor, to a partner of the opposite sex, and to their "team".
By long slow practices we begin to see their improvements. They are all in practice for the city championships. They will be paired up to dance 5 traditional dances, and we begin to keep our eye on the kids that seem to have more natural ability. The movie moves along through regional competitions leading up to the New York finals held beside the World Trade Center site. By this time you have been so captivated by these hard-working kids that you honestly pull for them much more than you would for fictional characters in some "Rocky Wanna Be" story.
I'd love to see how these kids turn out. They make me think that the American Dream is alive and well - and has many different faces, cultures and nationalities. The Mrs. and I both loved it.
I loved this movie. The filming of the City was wonderful, and I felt I was there in all the hustle bustle and the exquisite diversity. The children were so real and so funny and so heart warming that I laughed a lot and then cried with some of them as the story unfolded. If you like dance, and children delight you, you really must see this movie!
 It was a joy watching the kids, but for some of these teachers, you really gotta wonder if it was really about the kids, or just about themselves. In particular, the grim, determined Dominican drill instructor lady featured throughout, and the old authoritarian white lady who shows up later in the film, the one who is desperately trying to hang on to her youth (though that battle was lost ages ago)--for these two, I think it's safe to say it was about themselves first and foremost. I hope these two ladies are dance instructors only, and not also classroom educators, for I pity their students if the latter be the case. Both of these ladies showed what only could be described as "worship" for the big gold trophy they were after, in their actions and in their words. Interestingly, the best all-around teachers in this movie were the ones who emphasized the learning process and had their kids get shot down by the judges early on; they did not let themselves nor their kids engage in the worshipping of a giant trophy so that their dance instructor could whoop and holler and draw attention to herself--hey, let's save that "just win, baby" stuff for pro football; let's let grade school kids be grade school kids. The kids who lost, there can be no doubt that they learned the most about being a well-rounded, well-adjusted person in this life.
 "Mad Hot Ballroom", the new documentary about fifth graders from New York Public Schools who compete in ballroom dancing competitions, desperately wants to be the next "Spellbound".
Concentrating on teams from three schools; a school in Tribeca, a school from another part of Manhattan and a school from Brooklyn, we meet the teachers in charge of each of these programs and learn a little about the creation of the program. A brief interview with one of the administrators extols the virtues of teaching the students ballroom dancing, especially at the fifth grade level. As the programs continue, the students practice the Tango, the Rumba, the Foxtrot, the Merengue, Swing and other dances. As competition looms, the teachers have to decide which of the students will represent their teams in specific dances.
"Ballroom" is a pleasant diversion, but it fails to deliver anything of meaningful value as either a narrative or a documentary. "Spellbound", the documentary about students competing in the National Spelling Bee, was a great, suspenseful story following the lives of a number of the participants. The key difference between the two is that "Spellbound" followed a select group of the participants, to their homes, interacting with their parents, at school. We learned what made these kids tick. In "Ballroom", there is a key scene about halfway through. We see a couple of the parents, for the first time, as they pick their kids up and drive off with them. Or we see one of the dads roller skating with his son. Most of the parents are on screen for a fraction of a second, if that.
The film's focus is too broad. After the initial introduction to the three classrooms, we meet some of the students; at times they are talking to the camera, during others, we eavesdrop on their conversations with their friends. These conversations are interesting; they talk about boys and girls, their parents, older kids who get into drugs, their hopes, etc., but because we are watching so many kids, we don't get a true feeling for what makes any one of them tick. The names of the students pop up more than once when they are on camera. Even this doesn't help us truly identify the kids because we never spend enough time with them. Only later, when only one of the schools is left in the competition do we begin to remember who they are.
There are two groups at the center of this film. The students and their teachers. The two teachers supervising the Brooklyn program are given more screen time. The male teacher is clearly into the program and really wants to help these kids learn these dance moves. All of the adult supervisors seem to believe that the program helps the kids learn social skills, etiquette, deportment, responsibility and more. About halfway through the training, his female counterpart takes center stage, training the students, teaching them discipline, and more. In fact, the male teacher disappears for a long stretch of time, only to reappear during the beginning of the competition. Because of this shift, we don't really get a feeling about what makes these people tick either.
The adults at the other two schools; the Tribeca program is run by a middle-aged man with an accent and his younger, more `touchy-feely' female counterpart and I can't honestly remember the people who supervised the other school's program, aren't developed at all.
Why didn't the filmmakers explore the backgrounds or lives of anyone in the film? Without an emotional heart at the center of either group, the film ultimately becomes an empty excuse for watching the kids dance. Are we supposed to find it amusing? Touching? Hard work? It is difficult to say. Without a central core of characters to identify with, we can't really determine the purpose or drive behind the film.
Ultimately, as all films of this type must, everything comes down to a final competition. One of the three schools goes to this competition, and they are quite good. When their team gets up to do the Rumba or the Merengue, the students jump up and down with excitement because the kids are good, very good. But I didn't jump up and down with excitement, because I didn't know the kids, or empathize with them. I didn't care if they did a good job or not.
If we don't know the kids, or the teachers, or what is at stake for either, why should we care about the outcome of the competition? Why should you go to see "Mad Hot Ballroom"?
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