Tag Archives: Ballet

Limelight Review

Posted on by
Reply


Limelight is a film about a star who is well past his prime and doesn’t realize it. It’s always rough to know that you can no longer do something at the high level you once did, but it is inevitable depending on what that skill is. For example, you can’t really play Football past 60 and it’ll be tough to nail the Super Smash Bros melee inputs when you’re 80. Eventually you’re going to have to throw in the toesl and the main character learns that the hard way here.

The movie starts with Calvero having another tough day. It’s been difficult to find any kind of roles to play despite once being the king of comedy. He has a lot of drinks to accelerate his demise and then heads home only to find that a girl named Terry has nearly died after inhaling a lot of gasoline. He restores her to health along with a doctor and convinces her to stay alive this time. He’ll help her become a terrific dancer and he’ll try to get a new gig. Can his old humor style really transition into the new world though?

This is a pretty laidback film for a while even if it does get a little more intense by the end. The opening segments of the film is mainly about Calvero goofing off to try and make Terry feel better while trying to ignore his own difficulties. It’s difficult though because he really wants to make people laugh but his acts just aren’t very good. Not only does he only know 2-3 acts that he repeats over and over again but people don’t find him funny. He’s basically told to leave and his name is poison to the various shows.

Calvero gets the message but it’s not a fun one to understand. At least Terry is a hit which Calvero is happy about but he has not been able to reclaim the same success and feels as though he is holding her back. He’s a pretty well natured lead who makes for a fun guy but it does seem like he didn’t put the proper amount of effort in.

If your humor style isn’t working then it’s time to get some new acts. Keep on developing new material and eventually you’ll hopefully get somewhere. When he tries his new name out even Terry has to remind him that he can’t expect to be an overnight sensation after the first act. I suppose it’s partially because he’s older but the guy doesn’t have a whole lot of patience the way that he might have had in the past.

As for Terry, she’s a solid heroine. She does what she can to look after Calvero including telling the audience to cheer and laugh as much as they can. To the audience’s credit, they did a good job of this as they were extremely loud at the end of the film. Fortunately Calvero didn’t suspect a thing which is good but also sad in its own way. Calvero really could not read a room which is absolutely fatal for a comedian. You need to be able to read the audience to know when to cut a joke short or improvise which he just couldn’t.

Terry ends up falling for Calvero but as he and the film notes, it’s not really true love. She has mistaken her feelings of admiration and gratitude for love here. Calvero does his best to keep on trying to show her the light on this and it’s good since that romance would have been pretty bad. As it stands, he stayed strong on that note. Any kind of relationship with Nevill afterwards would come off as a rebound though so I like to think that Terry stayed strong as well. Either way, she was definitely a good friend/ally to have around.

Then you have Neville but there isn’t a whole lot to say about him. He has liked Terry for a while not but always tends to lose out which saddens him. He knew her a while ago back when she worked in a store and would give him some extra money and materials. Certainly a nice thing of her to do. Is he perhaps mistaking gratitude for love as well?

One of the best characters here had to be Postant. While he doesn’t get a huge role, he is a true scene stealer. Basically he’s the boss of the show and calls the shots. He has a good working relationship with Calvero and is a very reasonable person. I like his confidence and way of speaking. He does what he can to help the lead as well.

I haven’t spoken much about Calvero’s acts so lets talk about why they don’t succeed. The first he that he pretends to have a trained flea and performs tricks with it. The first issue as you can see is that it’s all pretend. People aren’t going to find that particularly funny or impressive since there’s nothing to see. Like, what’s the point of the exhibition at all right? It’s not a good act.

Then you’ve got the dummy act with his partner where they keep trying to fix a piano for a very long time. Even the audience had a very hard time fake laughing for that one although they did their best. This is really why he fell out of favor. The guy just wasn’t that funny and I would say he wasn’t even remotely funny. Every trick he did completely flopped.

That’s why I say Calvero ultimately needed more acts. The guy is good with instruments so maybe do some musical jokes. Switch to stand up comedy or something. His two routines just got stale the instant they started and so he was really doomed from the jump. That said, part of why I’ve never wanted to be a comedian is it’s hard to make other people laugh. I stick to making myself feel the humor. I can always get a good chuckle out of myself and humor is just so subjective that trying to tailor your humor to a bunch of people sounds crazy difficult. Kudos to the people who pull it off but for every success there are a bunch of performances that don’t make it to the big leagues.

Overall, Limelight is a good film. The writing is solid and the cast is good. I think we could have done without the romance plot but it’s handled well and I do like that the film goes out of its way to explain that this isn’t quite genuine. The movie’s also surprisingly long for such an old flick but it doesn’t drag on. That just means it has plenty of time to squeeze everything into the mix and it makes the most of this. I’d say the ending could have been a bit better to fully stick the landing but ultimately this is a title I could definitely recommend.

Overall 6/10

The Unfinished Dance Review

Posted on by
Reply


Ballet’s definitely not my thing. I’ve just never been a fan of it as a style of dance. It’s not particularly entertaining to watch and I don’t care much for the uniforms. It works more in a combat sense like in Sailor Moon I suppose but even then I’ll take something a little more combat ready. For dances ballet also tends to be a bit slower and I like something fast paced and with a lot of action. If you can get past the actual ballet then the film is good though.

The movie starts by introducing us to Meg. Meg is a spoiled kid who wants to be a great ballet dancer but isn’t willing to put in the work. She always skips her lessons to spy on Ariane and basically use up the professional’s time. If anyone says something negative about Ariane Meg is ready to throw hands and give someone the fade. She’s not a kid who is shy about taking someone on. This continues to get her into a lot of trouble though and her Mom/Aunt (I forget which) is super distant so the only parental figure in her life is the kind Mr. Paneros.

Mr. Paneros does his best to contain the damage but it’s often tricky. One day the ballet hires Anna, one of the greatest ballerinas in the world. Ariane knows that her lack of skill will be exposed compared to this person and runs off in a huff. Everyone agrees that Anna is better so Meg decides to put a stop to this. She opens up a trap door and cripples Anna so that Ariane will have the center stage again. The main issue is that her conscience is eating her alive and her “friend” knows about what is happening so there’s now a loose end in the mix. Can Meg make things right?

Now to Meg’s very slight defense it was an accident or at least the film tells us this. She meant to switch the lights off and only happened to turn on the trap door. Sure……lets roll with that. It’s not very convincing though as she could have done any number of things instead of watching the whole time. It was not a good look to say the least. Meg is very extreme throughout the film as she casually talks about death and such. It’s unfortunate but nobody ends up helping her out of her obsessions here.

Mr. Paneros is a good character who means well but does often choose the wrong course of action. He tries to console Meg but ends up lying about everything all the time. It’s like he can’t help it because the guy just keeps on doubling down. It’s a bad habit that he certainly needs to break. At least he’s there for Meg though as her family is never around to do anything. It makes his one sided romance more on the tragic side since he is permanently stuck in the friend zone with the aunt.

As for Ariane, I didn’t like her. I thought the film was low key portraying her as a villain the whole time. It makes sense when you think about it with how petty she was. Anna was very polite the whole time while Ariane didn’t want her picture taken and kept squirming. Initially I thought Anna would end up being a villain but the film never actually went down that road. As a result it just made Ariane look even worse in comparison. She is quick to give up her dream as well which is all well and good but then it makes her jealousy look even worse since she was never that serious about her dream.

Meanwhile Anna is definitely the best character in the film. She suffers a rather bad break but doesn’t let it get to her. I’ll also give a lot of kudos to her assistant/coach who was with her every step of the rehabilitation. She was always there to lend a helping hand to Anna and to try and keep her spirits up throughout everything that was happening. They thought of the coaching idea together and at least Anna now had a sense of normalcy. Anna consistently took the high road as well while the other characters were treading water.

I was glad her ending didn’t get too sad as it would have ended things on a rather unfortunate note. Meanwhile the other kids are mostly left to bicker by the end as you’d expect. Meg now knows that she can’t trust her “friend” and also that the class bully is still around. There’s not a whole lot that they can do at this point and proving anything would be difficult so Meg has nothing to worry about. I like to think they will have an employee by the trap door machine at all times now though. No reason for that to be left unattended.

As mentioned earlier, the only weakness for me would be the actual Ballet scenes. They just weren’t all that entertaining at all if you ask me. I was always just ready for those scenes to move on so we could get on with the story. Especially when Meg tried to dance as she just isn’t ready for the ballet scene yet. Additionally, she was an annoying character so you were never quite looking forward to her getting some screen time.

Overall, The Unfinished Dance is a pretty emotional movie that manages to capture the balance between drama and uplifting moments rather well. The movie gets sad at times but also has happy moments sprinkled in as well. Ultimately that’s a good mix to strive for. Mr. Paneros reminded me of Panera Bread with the name but it’s unique so you won’t forget him and he was clearly a good cook. His origin story where he wastes his last dime was definitely sad but you also can’t help but feel like you shouldn’t be playing around with your last dime right? Seems to me that would be really important to keep safe in your pocket.

Overall 6/10