Cheap Take the Lead (DVD) (Liz Friedlander) Price

The sensuous thrill of ballroom dancing collides with the hip-hop world of self-expression in Take the Lead. Antonio Banderas (Desperado, The Mask of Zorro) stars as Pierre Dulaine, a dance teacher who--perhaps to fill a void in his own life--decides to teach the foxtrot and the tango to a group of inner-city high school students who've been put in detention. The kids sullenly resist this intruder with his silly box-steps, but gradually succumb to the allure of passion channeled into physical grace. It's a lot of hooey, of course--the stories about the individual kids are shallow melodrama--but a movie like this isn't so much about plot as about dancing, and the dancing bewitches. The main problem of Take the Lead is that there isn't enough dancing; at least half of the personal struggle of the students could be jettisoned and happily be replaced by fifteen minutes of a sleek and sexy rhumba. Still, Banderas has a warm, ingratiating presence and can spout platitudes about dance with conviction; Alfre Woodard (Crooklyn, Desperate Housewives) has her usual charismatic authority as the school's hard-nosed principal; and the dance competition at the movie's end gives the movie the lift it's wanted for the previous hour and a half. --Bret Fetzer

CATEGORY:	DVD
DIRECTOR:	Liz Friedlander
THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE:	07 April, 2006
MANUFACTURER:	New Line Home Video
MPAA RATING:	PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
FEATURES:	Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
TYPE:	Adult Situations, Biography [feature], Color, Dancer's Life, Drama, English, Feature, Feature Film Drama, Feature Film-drama, Flashy, Movie, Profanity, Rousing, Stylized, Teachers and Students, USA, Underdogs, Violence
MEDIA:	DVD
MPN:	DN10363D
# OF MEDIA:	1
UPC:	794043103636