Julia Stiles is compelling in everything she does. I didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did. It’s yet another Karate Kid/Dirty Dancing, Rocky, Flashdance, you name it. The one person who shouldn’t by any conventional reality “make it”, makes it against the odds. Here that person is Julia Stiles. There is an estranged-father/daughter subplot in this movie that is far too similar to Fly Away Home and not aided by the fact that said estranged father in this movie is played by the same actor who played Anna Paquin’s uncle in the latter. What works wonderfully in this movie is the juxtaposition and harmony of the two worlds of ballet (Stiles’ aspiration) and hip-hop (where she learns the passion she needs to give her sound ballet technique wings).

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2004 at 9:04 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as ballet, dance, father-daughter, hip-hop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.