By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.3 cats
Director: Marilyn Agrelo
Country: united_states
Year: 2005
Running time: 105
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438205/combined
Diane says: “Marilyn Agrelo’s MAD HOT BALLROOM is another in the growing field of docu’s following a competition. Here, New York fifth-graders vie in ballroom dancing. Agrelo’s attempts to delve into the home lives and views of her subjects ends up being slight and superficial. For my money, she could have left it out and put in more dancing shots. Watching the kids learn and compete was great.
“The dancing couples are required to be boy-girl. Some of the weak outside-the-class material was girls responding to questions about which boys they like, etc. I had no idea that heterosexism was being promoted like this in our public schools! There was a shot of three girls in a line dancing without partners. Definitely a need for gender-blind classes. This will only bring up a whole new generation of women who, like myself, are unable to lead. 3 cats.”
Janet says: “Having heard unfavorable comparisons between this film and SPELLBOUND, which it resembles, I expected not to like it much. But I ended up enjoying the heck out of it, mostly because I loved watching the dancing of the kids from the Dominican Republic. The filmmakers aren’t as adept as the SPELLBOUND directors in filling us in on the backgrounds of each of the competitors, and this struck me as a film in which the directors assume that we know the characters much better than we do. (Another one I felt that way about was the 60s-revisited doc THE SAME RIVER TWICE.)
“Wanting to know more about the cast members, I looked at the official web site for the film—cringe! Nothing more there, and if only they had hired a professional writer/editor! Filmed conversations with the kids meant to reveal their thoughts about careers, dancing, the opposite sex, etc., seemed forced. They end up talking about drug dealers and teenage parents, as if this was what the filmmakers wanted to hear. I bet the SPELLBOUND people filmed 10 times as much footage and then picked the most revealing moments. Anyway, it is entertaining and a toe-tapper, and a good film to take your mother to, as I did. 3 cats”
Michael says: “My expectations for MAD HOT BALLROOM were pretty low after its lukewarm reviews in the theaters, and similarly tepid reactions from the few Chlotrudis members who had seen it. So I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this delightful, straight-forward documentary about the ballroom dancing program initiated in the greater New York City public schools. What could have been a heartstring-tugging, manipulative film was instead a fairly natural depiction of events. The filmmakers wisely got out of the way, and just filmed the classes preparing for competition and let the children tell the tale. Much screentime is spent during preparations for the ballroom dance competition, where the children are first awkward and reluctant to take part. The filmmakers also spend time with the children away from school, catching their conversations on such topics as dancing, their parents, their prospects, and the boy/girl relationships that are just beginning to flower at their age. These scenes seem fairly unforced and unscripted, and reveal a lot about the difficult life of young children in New York City. The teachers and dance instructors get their fair share of screentime as well, and here is where some of the heartfelt dialogue sweeps in, but coming from the caretakers of these children’s education, it works. Of course, the payoff comes at the actual ballroom dancing competitions, and it’s worthwhile. While MAD HOT BALLROOM is reminiscent of SPELLBOUND, there is less of a set-up feeling to the story, and I came away feeling good and good about the film. 4 cats”