BILLY ELLIOT Reviewed 11/12/2000

Feel-good movies follow a predictable arc with an uncomplicated iconography:

• Plucky but determined ugly duckling pursues a cause despite opposition from schoolmates.
• Duckling is adopted by a Visionary Teacher (usually opposite gender, usually a stand-in for a conveniently dead parent) who Sees Something in the youngster.
• The family is opposed, then one day they are surprised at the talent.
• Then there are the money problems and the inevitable competition with better-financed supercilious opponents ….

But we go to such movies because human beings are, after all, romantic at heart. Just as we seek patterns in the universe, we want homily virtues to be rewarded by winning out over obstacles. These stories nourish our hope and, in the bright darkness, we imagine ourselves into the protagonist. We make a tacit bargain that we will suspend our critical anticipation of the predictable story arc so that we can laugh or gasp or cry when we should. We will let ourselves be led by the story's structure, and our suspended critical faculties will be placated by an uplifting ending.

If BILLY ELLIOT, a canonical feel-good story, were a horse, it would be by OCTOBER SKY out of BRASSED OFF. North of England (Durham instead of Sheffield instead of West Virginia) with dying coal mines (a visually obligatory feature, it seems), 1984, amidst a bitter Thatcherian miner's strike. A boy who is sensitive but definitely *not* gay (a critical element in keeping this a down-the-middle feel-good rather than a gay advocacy), is drawn to ballet ….

Feel-good movies stand or fall on a series of key elements, all of which this movie has:

• A strong and credible protagonist. Jamie Hall, the 13-year-old actor who plays 11-year-old Billy Elliot, is wonderfully convincing. You can see the actor is smart, and he shows quite a range (the best kid performance I can remember since Christian Bale in EMPIRE OF THE SUN, and Macauley Culkin? puleeeze). This kid is going to be a major actor on screen or stage.
• A likable ugly duckling. The kid's role is appealing and he fills it well, and as a hedge against audiences missing the ugly duckling subtext, the role Billy winds up pursuing is the male lead in Swan Lake.
• Effective ensemble acting. Julie Walters, who herself played the plucky kid in EDUCATING RITA (hand-me-down archetypes, just as Patty Duke who started by playing Helen Keller is now playing Annie, Keller's teacher), here plays the gritty Yorkshire ballet teacher. Billy's brother, father, dotty grandmother and best friend all deliver as they should.
• Interesting bits of backfill. Whatever context you learned in BRASSED OFF applies here too, or if you missed that movie, you can learn it here.
• Light but moving bits of unexpected yet memorable humor. Plenty of those.

ã Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith