jdandtex-338-717921 This is one of my go to movies to enjoyed the vibrancy and energy of the dancers. I love, love, love the dancing. There were a lot of young talented dancers. As far as the ending, so what? Baz Lurman did something similar in "Strictly Ballroom" and he's considered a great director. The ending in both movies weren't totally what would have happened, but it made me feel good. We don't always need to see "real life" in movies. I think that anything inspirational in a positive way in movies is worth it. Someone may see something that they think "Let me try that and see where it takes me". There are too many negative ones out there. I enjoyed watching this movie because it made me feel good.

buiger It's a shame, I really wanted to give this movie a better rating, in spite of all the political correctness (which in this case amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking) and in spite of the story often veering off into fairy tale territory, but the ending completely destroyed and made me forget anything that was good in this film. How can the filmmakers be so dumb and not see that nobody (and I mean nobody) will buy that type of silly ending, so plastered with good feeling and political correctness, that you can see the sweet, sticky glue oozing out from all pores... It is ridiculous! To consider that all this is supposed to be based on a true story makes things even worse. The real Pierre Dulaine should sue for slander!On the other hand, what is positive in this film is a good premise/storyline which could however have been developed much better, made much more realistic. Also positive are most acting performances (especially Banderas who is very convincing in his role, I must grudgingly admit), the sound quality and the dancing. It's a real pity the film eventually veered off in the wrong direction.

Aristides-2 1."Take The Lead" is o.k. and is standard Hollywood o.k. except for the ending, which was preposterous, because it was manipulative and couldn't have happened in real life. (Could anyone believe for a moment that Banderas was so grief stricken, years later, that he didn't have a girlfriend?)2. For those of you who really liked this movie, however, there is a great feature-length documentary on NYC's public school ballroom program/competition and it's called "Mad Hot Ballroom". But this movie is the real McCoy; the entire film. It's also well done technically, but mainly is peopled by real kids; not a professional actor in sight. Story is additionally great because it builds to a highpoint ending that the docu-maker could only have fantasized about at the beginning of the project. I don't want to "Spoiler" it but what a dramatic payoff! And every element of it really happened; you can see it happening!

Charles Herold (cherold) This movie is "inspired by" the story of Pierre Dulaine, who started a ballroom dance school program in New York. But "inspired by" seems to equal "use a real person's name," because this movie feels utterly false in every detail, from its "cute meet" with a thuggish (but good-hearted) student through its two cardboard bad guys to a final ridiculous finale that pushed absurdly unrealistic to new heights. It felt so unlikely, and I remembered that Mad Hot Ballroom, about that same dance program, had featured younger kids, so I googled around and found an excellent review on some website called Townhall by Megan Basham that pretty much said everything I felt, and also pointed out that in fact the program was created not by one person but by two and did in fact start in two schools with younger kids of various backgrounds.But what is probably a very interesting story is tossed out in favor of a very shallow Hollywoodization.This is not to say the movie isn't watchable. The cast is engaging and there are some nice dance numbers in it, and of course Hollywood clichés can have a certain manipulative power. But the problem is, every new ridiculous event in the movie pushed me further from enjoyment and towards irritation.When people complain about Hollywood movies, this is exactly what they're complaining about.