An economically depressed city in Northern England, a
story line about dancing, a greatest-hits soundtrack --
sounds just like The Full Monty, doesn’t it? Well, this
is just as entertaining, maybe a bit more poignant,
and a heck of a lot tougher on its star performer.
Acting newcomer Jamie Bell apparently survived the
rigors of an exhaustive casting call (2000 young boys
were auditioned, the press kit says) to play Billy Elliot,
a 13-year-old kid in strikebound Durham who, as the
movie opens, is enduring his own little hell on earth.
His tough-as-nails miner father (Gary Lewis) has
been driven nearly mad with grief by his wife’s recent
death. His belligerent older brother (Jamie Draven) is
all too willing to bring the town’s labour strife home.
His sweet, senile granny (Jean Haywood) goes in and
out of reality. They all live cheek by jowl by snarl.
Billy, who’s a sweet-natured soul, seems OK with
Dad’s demand that he work out at the boxing club
(which costs Dad 50 pence of ill-earned strike pay),
and Billy does so in a amusingly nonchalant fashion
until the day when the upstairs ballet school is forced
to share the gym with the pugilists, because the
miner’s union needs the ballet space for its picket-line
cafeteria.
Things mysteriously change for Billy - he’s drawn
toward the troupe that Mrs. Wilkinson teaches for the
same 50 pence every week. (The chainsmoking Mrs.
Wilkinson is played by the great Julie Walters, whom
most of us first encountered with Educating Rita)
Billy switches teams, so to speak, and at this point
Jamie Bell, who apparently has been dancing since he
was six, proceeds to deliver a amazing performance
of someone learning how to dance. You don’t have to
care at all about dance to like this movie. Bell is
unblinkably on. Billy’s learning curve, if you will, is
both enchanting and sad, so resistant are his father
and brother to a world that might embrace acts of
individual ambition and creativity.