It’s difficult to talk about Mad Hot Ballroom without coming over all twee and using unadorable words like ’adorable’ but it is actually a much cooler film than that might suggest. Marilyn Agrelo’s charming (see?) documentary charts the fortunes of various 11 year-old New York kids as they do battle on the dance floor as part of a public school programme in ballroom dancing.
It certainly makes for cute spectacle, even if it does set you wondering how often those kids must get beaten up.
Still, if their lives are hell on earth, it simply doesn’t translate onto the screen. Mad Hot Ballroom is a happy, skippy little number with a gorgeous melting pot quality pitched from someplace between Spike Lee and Sesame Street.
Inevitably, comparisons have been made with 2002’s Spellbound, the spelling bee thriller with similarly precocious charges and while the salsa and the rumba are simply far too artsy to embody American Dreaming in quite the same way as being a good speller, Ballroom‘s witty depiction of the sexual codes among pre-teens lends the film something unique.
It is both fascinating and hilarious watching 11 year olds being taught to gaze into one another’s eyes for the tango, when it’s pretty clear that they regard the opposite sex as totally alien and kind of icky. “I read that women are a more advanced civilization,” pronounces one sensible young girl. “The problem with being a girl is that you have to have babies,” declares another.
Happily, Marilyn Agrelo’s film never lets baser, condescending tastes for the funny things children say dictate the pre-pubescent dance of it all. The straight-talking environment means you can lap up the uplifting denouement without worrying about the possible irony-deficiency involved.