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'Take the Lead': Saved by the dance

Agile, sensual, but cliché-riddled, Take the Lead is a little late to take the lead when it comes to audience-friendly entertainments about the transforming power of dance. But its timing probably could not be better when it comes to cashing in on the unexpected popularity of television's Dancing With the Stars and such movies as Shall We Dance and Mad Hot Ballroom.

New Line Cinema 'Take the Lead' C+ The verdict: A fictionalized Mad Hot Ballroom full of hot dance steps and stale clichés. Director: Liz Friedlander Starring: Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown, Yaya DaCosta, Dante Basco, John Ortiz Run time: 108 minutes Release date: April 7, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for thematic material, language and some violence. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Take the Lead'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Take the Lead is a much-fictionalized version of the New York City public school program of compulsory dance lessons that was captured so winningly in Mad Hot Ballroom. And if that film had not been a documentary, it might have seemed far-fetched too. Take the Lead's screenplay by Dianne Houston trowels on the goo, but at least it compensates by cutting away frequently to some steamy dance steps.

Much of that steam is provided by Antonio Banderas, who stars as Pierre Dulaine, founder of the American Ballroom Theater, the man whose "Dancing Classrooms" program now trains more than 7,500 elementary school kids in social skills and the fox trot, imparting self-esteem as a byproduct.

Understandably, but unwisely, Houston and first-time director Liz Friedlander change the students from fifth-graders to high school age. This ups the melodrama of teens about to give up on their lives, but squanders one of Mad Hot Ballroom's key strengths, the awkward wonder of youngsters first discovering and adjusting to new feelings toward the opposite sex.

In Take the Lead, Dulaine shows up at an uptown Manhattan school, volunteers his services to a skeptical, crusty but caring principal (Alfre Woodard), who figures he will run screaming into the night when she agrees to let him test his dance-as-maturing-influence theories on a group of hardened misfits on perpetual detention in the school's basement.

Yes, they laugh at this funny-looking, overdressed idealist who wants them to trade in their bass-heavy hip-hop music for the hard-to-relate-to romanticism of the Gershwin brothers. Yes, despite their resistance, he gets them dancing and finding an unexpected goal in their lives when Dulaine tells them about a — what else? — ballroom dance competition in which they can vie against privileged white-bread white kids. And yes, many unlikely obstacles are put in the way of the detention crowd only to have them evaporate before the competition is over.

Maybe the DVD of Take the Lead will figure out a way to mute the dialogue, while retaining the musical soundtrack, for that is the optimum way to view this picture. Better yet, maybe there will be a way to delete all the story scenes and just play the dance sequences.

Banderas has the right blend of sex appeal and self-effacing charm as Dulaine and he sure can do a mean tango. The dance scenes are uniformly appealing, though the film never sufficiently shows the sweat and effort that goes into such fancy footwork. Your disbelief had better be put well into suspension by the time of the tango finale, which turns into an impromptu threesome dance that could only be achieved with meticulous choreography and rehearsal.

Still, Take the Lead is not only harmless, its heavy-handed messages are all terribly well-meaning. And if this fable of instant twinkletoes gets a few more people up and dancing, let alone seeking a positive direction to their lives, then the cliché-slinging will not have been in vain.