Movie Review Take the Lead

Take the Lead (2006) 

Directed by Liz Friedlander 

Written by Dianne Huston 

Starring Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown, Alfre Woodard 

Release Date April 7th, 2006

Published April 7th, 2006

The real life of Pierre Dulaine is one that should be honored with some variation of the nobel prize. While on the surface that may seem outrageous, Pierre Dulaine is merely a ballroom dance instructor. However, a closer examination shows that Mr. Dulaine's ballroom dance classes introduced to inner city New York classrooms returned more positively reinforced children and improved classmates than any after school activity in the history of New York schools.

His fight to bring culture to the classroom was ridiculed as frivolous and a waste of what limited resources schools had for their often troubled inner city students. Mr. Dulaine turned that around by demonstrating a unique ability to bring even the worst lost causes back to school on a daily basis. His care and hard work helped many kids discover a love for learning they never knew they had.

There may not be a Nobel prize for Pierre Dulaine but at the very least Hollywood has a loving treatment of his life in the new drama Take The Lead. Yes, this is a creaky little old school overcoming the odds drama but if anyone deserves a sickly sweet love letter its Pierre Dulaine.

In the inner city high schools of New York City teachers fight to save the kids they feel they can save and just hope the rest don't get killed. Years of underfunding, lack of security and just plain hopelessness will lead to the kind of defeatist attitudes that pervade these schools.

Thankfully Pierre Dulaine (Antonio Banderas) was never exposed to this systemic hopelessness. Pierre Dulaine is a ballroom dance instructor with his own high end studio and upper crust clientele. One night, while riding his bike home, Pierre comes in contact with Rock (Rob Brown) , a troubled kid who has just vandalized his Principal's car.

The principal is played by the terrific Alfre Woodard who skeptically receives a visit from Pierre Dulaine the following morning. Pierre is not here to rat out the student who destroyed her car. Rather, he wishes to offer his services as an instructor to any student willing to learn to dance.

The principal is ready to laugh Pierre out of her office before she remembers that she has no instructor for her detention. What harm can it do for her to let Pierre try and teach some of the school's most lost causes how to cha cha cha. Heck he probably won't last the afternoon.

Known as the school's rejects, the detention kids are a mixed group of street thugs, latch key kids and lost souls who have been told all their lives that they have no chance of escaping their surroundings. Ramos (Dante Basco), Lahrette (Yaya DaCosta), Monster (Brandon Andrews), Easy (Lyriq Bent) and Tina (Laura Benanti) are just a few of the kids the rest of the teachers have given up on.

Also in Mr. Dulaine's detention class is Rock who does not believe Pierre's appearance is a coincidence. Convinced Pierre is going to turn him in for his vandalism refuses to participate even as the rest of the class begins to come around to Pierre's passionate demonstrations.

Antonio Banderas is the linchpin of Take The Lead. His performance sells what is essentially a predictable, almost farcical inner city melodrama. With his usual smolder at a mere simmer, Banderas crafts a starring performance that is unlike anything he has delivered before.

Humble yet strong, charismatic without trying Banderas pays near perfect tribute to Pierre Dulaine.

The rest of the cast is good if undistinguished. As tends to happen with such large casts of young actors, names and faces get lost in the crowd. I can tell you that each dances incredibly well but beyond that, only the enigmatic Rob Brown really stands out.

I have been a fan of Rob Brown since his exceptional debut alongside Sean Connery in the underrated drama Finding Forrester. Brown needs to break the mold of the High School roles that have been his forte since Forrester, including another terrific performance in 2005's Coach Carter. One of these days Rob Brown will take a role that is not another High School coming of age story and he will become a major star.

Take The Lead was directed by rookie director Liz Friedlander, a music video veteran. The music video experience likely explains why only the dance scenes really jump off the screen while much of the drama is clumsy. Friedlander and screenwriter Dianne Houston fumble Pierre's introduction which is supposed to deliver his motivation for teaching these kids. 

This forces some fancy footwork, pun intended, by Banderas to make the character work. It is a tribute to Banderas that he rescues much of the film from a number of similar mistakes. Mistakes that include a thinly drawn villain character, a fellow teacher, whose reasons for hating Mr. Dulaine and his dance classes are merely the contrivance of the plot.

I'm not saying that Take The Lead is a very good movie, actually it's just barely a good movie. I am saying that because of Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown and the real life Pierre Dulaine, there is a great deal about Take The Lead that works.

As a tribute to a man who deserves a tribute, see Take The Lead and be inspired by the spirit of Pierre Dulaine.

Movie Review: Coach Carter

Coach Carter (2005) 

Directed by Thomas Carter

Written by Mark Schwan, John Gatins

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Rob Brown 

Release Date January 14th, 2005 

Published January 13th, 2005 

In 1999, Richmond High School's basketball coach, Ken Carter, made national headlines by doing something unheard of from an inner-city school. Locking up his gym and cancelling games, Coach Carter required his student athletes to actually be students. I can recall remarking at the time that there was no doubt this story would become a movie and, five years later, that movie has arrived.

Watered down to the mainstream, easy-listening pace of a Hollywood feature, Coach Carter gains resonance and drama thanks to its casting of the amazing Samuel L. Jackson.

When Ken Carter returned to his alma mater, Richmond High School, in the ghettos of Richmond, California, he found a run-down, raggedy basketball team with the discipline of a street gang. Coming out of a 4 and 20 season, the teams' prospects looked no brighter for the new season. That will change under Coach Carter's leadership. With his imposing presence, booming voice, and willingness to allow the teams' best players to quit if they won't follow orders, Coach Carter knows how to take control.

Carter's first act as head coach is to make the players sign an agreement that requires a grade point average higher than the high school standard. The players are also required to wear ties on game day and sit in the front of the classrom. That is not the least of his demands. On the court, Coach Carter runs his team through the floor, teaching them the fundamentals that most of the players had never learned.

With such a large cast, the players don't resonate much as characters. Most simply fit character types that seem diverse when taken as a whole. There is the clown (Antwon Tanner), the white kid (Channing Tatum), and the coach's own son (Robert Ri'chard), who earns his place on the team by promising to work twice as hard. There is also the troubled kid (Rick Gonzalez), whose involvement with drugs and gangs serves as the example of what the kids are striving to avoid.

The one player in Coach Carter who makes an impact is played by Rob Brown, the impressive young actor from 2000's Finding Forrester, whose natural talent is to seem as if he is not acting at all. Brown is truly awesome; his presence dominates even when his character is silent. Brown is involved in the films' most controversial subplot, a high school pregnancy with pop-star Ashanti, who makes an impressive film debut. The subplot is controversial for its results and its unique treatment, but I felt responsibly portrayed and especially well-acted by these two superior young actors.

Coach Carter was directed by television veteran Thomas Carter, no relation to the Coach, who distinguishes this cliched sports-movie premise, uplifting after-school-special kind of stuff, by casting the brilliant Samuel L. Jackson. The casting of someone with Jackson's star power and presence sells the uplifting and potentially sappy elements of the plot.

Jackson is aided greatly by a surprisingly good script by John Gatins and Mark Schwahn, though they were likely assisted by the on-set involvement of the real Coach Ken Carter, whose "No B.S." approach I'm sure was a guiding influence. What makes this story so much more interesting and intelligent than most movies of its genre is the serious way it treats its academic storyline. Yes, the basketball scenes are well shot, but the impressive part is the seriousness of its true subject, the importance of an education.\

Unlike the cowardly Friday Night Lights, a movie that shunned the frightening sociology behind its football story, Coach Carter takes its sociological underpinnings head on. The film tackles, at times indirectly, the psychological, economical and social pressures that cause young black men to lose hope and give in to the lures of easy money by selling drugs.

Coach Carter's one-man-against-the-world approach does at times appear comical. It takes a little while for us to understand why the community rises up against the coach, who's simply trying to make sure their children get educated. Eventually, you do understand, which deepens the sadness and drama that help the film earn its uplifting sports-movie ending.

Coach Carter is not perfect--it has the mainstream, feel-good tone that is the hallmark of both MTV Films and Producers Brian Robbins and Michael Tollin. But, the film also has Samuel L. Jackson, who after drifting through a series of dreadful roles in films like Twisted, Formula 51 and No Good Deed, is back in "badass" form. It is Jackson's performance that makes the feel-good approach not feel either false or sappy. His presence, his dramatic weight and, best of all, that booming 'basso profundo' sell this piece as more than just another sports movie.