Home » Volume 17 No.5 > Politically correct dancing

FILMS

Politically correct dancing

Richard Leonard April 02, 2007

Razzle Dazzle: A Journey into Dance. Starring Kerry Armstrong, Jane Hall, Ben Miller, Toni Lamond and Nadine Garner. Directed by Darren Ashton. Rated PG. 95 mins. website

Mr Jonathon (Miller) runs a suburban dance school with a difference. He only produces routines that drive home a social or political message. His young protégés have to immerse themselves in choreographies about starvation, people dying of AIDS and the nuclear holocaust. Miss Elizabeth (Hall), on the other hand, runs a very traditional ballet academy where the closest the children come to getting down and dirty is a demi-plié.

Miss Elizabeth has won the Sanosafe Troupe Spectacular several times. But with the determination of a young dancer Tenille (Shayni Notelovitz) and her overbearing stage mum, Justine (Armstrong), this year might be a triumph for the socially inept dancing the politically correct.

Razzle Dazzle: A Journey into Dance is a classic ocker comedy. It lifts the lid on a particular slice of Australian suburbia, and deliciously mocks it. Reminiscent of Strictly Ballroom, this film parodies the pushy parent, children’s recreation out of control, competition as everything, and middle class sensibilities.

The children in this film are very talented, and there are some hilarious moments on the screen. But the overall impression is not as great as its parts. In fact I found Razzle Dazzle an unsettling film for two reasons.

Many of the children we get to know come out of complex backgrounds – homosexual parents, rejected foster placements, serious body image issues or abusive mothers. It is hard to simply laugh off some of this stuff.

Secondly, in the name of advocating for multiculturalism, one of Mr Jonathan’s ballets highlights the violent oppression of Afghani women by their men. In the choreography the symbol of their emancipation is when these Islamic women discard the burkha and jive around as western women. Such an idea might play to the gallery, but does not help anyone name the nature of gender politics, and let us not pretend that multiculturalism is truly expressed by everyone looking like us.

Razzle Dazzle is cute and fun, but is certainly not the "spectacular comedy" the creators would have us believe.

 

 

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SUBMITTED COMMENTS

 

Jim Jones29 Mar 2007

I saw this film very differently and I would recommend it to anyone. I didn't see it as being about politically correct dancing, or about women in Afghanistan; these were just instances of Mr Jonathan's (Ben Miller) obtuseness. The acting was of an extraordinarily high standard; they all strolled along the tightrope of being both outrageous and deadpan with impressive ease.
The negatives that Richard Leonard saw were not, I think, valid criticisms of the film, but criticisms of the fictional characters.
Se itt. See it. See it.

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Richard Leonard SJ  

Rev Dr Richard Leonard SJ is the director of the Australian Catholic Film Office and author of Movies That Matter: Reading Film Through The Lens of Faith.

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