Billy Elliot review: Modern fairytale with Geordie accents
(First published in 2000)
Set in the north east of England against the backdrop of a mining community torn apart by the miners’ strike in the 1980s this movie uses the classic breaking out of your surroundings against all the odds template.
Billy’s brother and widowed father are out on strike and feeling the financial and emotional strain. Despite this, his father scrapes the 50p a week required to send Billy to boxing classes in the local hall. A double booking one week forces the boxing lesson to share the hall with the ballet class and Billy is intrigued. He hangs around after the boxing lesson, gets roped into the ballet class and finds himself hooked. The film then follows Billy’s quest to become a ballet dancer against all the odds.
Jamie Bell plays Billy Elliot, and does a very good job on the acting side. I wasn’t overly convinced he was a ballet dancer with any talent though, which is the premise of the whole story. He tries really hard but he just doesn’t hack it on certain moves and shows no gracefulness at all. I could be missing the point though if it was supposed to be like that.
Julie Walters plays the ballet teacher but her character was not capable of inspiring Billy much at all to me. She was bereft of any of the inspirational qualities that would have been imperative to keep Billy’s interest against all the opposition from his peers and family.
Some of the directional ideas of the film didn’t quite work for me either. I respect the attempt to try something different, but I personally didn’t like the editing of different scenes that were so obviously contrived to go with the music - especially when Billy gets angry a few times and has extended tantrums expressed through dance and choreographed to the soundtrack.
One of the most unbelievable aspects of the film is the wallpaper in Billy’s house - every room is grotesquely covered in the worst wallpaper imaginable. Actually there are quite a few things I found very implausible. One scene has the riot police chasing Billy’s brother through several houses and on his way through one he picks up a cup of tea and snatches a slurp of it – very contrived. Then, exiting through the back door he finds himself facing a hundred or so riot police bashing their shields. He proceeds to run through about a dozen washing lines in different back yards. Each line is completely full of only white sheets and clothes which would never occur naturally in a million years. Of course, the white sheets are simply a prop to show some nice red blood when he finally gets caught but it’s all too contrived for my taste.
There are light hearted moments throughout the film and you get to see the bloke who plays Jeff in Byker Grove say, “wanker”, which raised a laugh from the cinema audience.
I also found the end scene confusing. It is set a dozen years into the future but Billy’s brother doesn’t look a day older so it appears at first as if the scene is set only months later and is disorientating. The final scene though - once you are up to speed with it, is quite powerful, especially with the operatic music.
I would say the film was OK not great - but not rubbish either. My wife however enjoyed it a lot more than I did so please remember it’s only my opinion and I can be quite critical.
Written by Andy(ArT)Trigg on April 14th, 2008 with
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