Review of Billy Elliot (2000) by James B — 15 Dec 2010

One of the unique things about movies compared to any other medium, is that characters have the ability to change in relatively no time at all. In the span of two hours a character can go from a mentally disease impaired middle aged adult to a normal man with the girl of his dreams (As Good As It Gets), or a chocolate tycoon can turn from a jaded soul into an optimist who finally sees hope in someone (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and in Billy Elliot... well, I won't spoil it for you. But this is one of the things I love about movies more than any other format. In television change may happen gradually over time, novels take more than two hours to read (at least for me), videogames could take fifty hours to get through, but for someone with a short attention span who needs some inspiration, a great motivational film is the best bet, even more so that music I would say, because a song can turn your day around for the better, but an inspirational movie has the potential of showing you how you can turn your life around for the better.

When I was a teenage atheist, I looked to the movies as my primary source of inspiration, the darkened movie theatre was like a chapel to me, so when Spielberg gave me a down ending (or what I saw back then as a down ending) back in 2004 with The Terminal, I almost didn't know what to do with myself, but by then I was a new convert with my hope in Christ, so I graduated from the movies to a more continous and stable source of inspiration. But I still watch a rare movie sometimes and am uplifted by the experience, Precious was a great example of this out of recent films that I've seen and also as strange as it may sound, The Good the Bad and the Ugly (everything that happens between two of the main characters which builds up to the ending involving these same two characters), and also Billy Elliot is another addition to that list.

The father character in Billy Elliot reminds me a bit of my father, like Billy's dad, my dad sees the pursuit of my hobby as a pipe dream (except using more derisive terms). So while I instantly, upon learning only a little bit about the movie before watching it, cast a judgment about ten years ago when the movie came out decided not to watch the movie because it was about a boy dancer wearing shorts several sizes too short, and the movie based on the trailers, looked very fruity to me. But upon watching the movie I instantly identified with Billy because of how his dad treats him. And the brother too, is like my brother, when Billy says a few words to his brother, his brother just tells him to "fuck off".

But there is hope in this short movie, and characters in it change. And it doesn't take months or years of ballet practice to change it, because time is compressed into about two hours.

When the movie opens Billy Elliot is taking boxing lessons, but really isn't doing well with them, really isn't enjoying them. One day when the ballet troupe next door has to move into Billy's boxing studio to accommodate a miner's strike (the 80's Margaret Thatcher British miner's strike is the backdrop for the film and also an important plot element) Billy starts dancing with the girls, and although he won't admit that he liked it, he comes back then next week, and the next...

As I've already written before his conservative dad won't have it, and his big brother refuses to have a "puff" as a brother, but Billy's ballet teacher sees his passion for it, and encourages the boy to keep practicing, soon he changes the hearts of everybody in the small town and even inspires his grandma, a sweet old lady with dementia.

Billy Elliot is good but the country English accents of the characters were so thick I had to watch Billy Elliot with subtitles turned on.

And I'm still not crazy about Billy having to wear such short shorts (I've seen male cheerleaders practice with long, slightly loose, comfortable exercise pants). More importantly, I also wish the father would have been more resistant to change, I think that would have made the movie more powerful if he would have been an even darker force against Billy's dreams. but these are the only complaints I had with this film.

Julie Walters is amazing as Billy's sarcastic, funny and encouraging teacher. And the other actors and actresses also do great jobs.

The story is simple, but effectively told.

Yes the movie is rated, R, but largely for language, aside from language, which isn't used gratuitously but seems to be organic to the characters, there is little offensive about this movie.