BALLROOM, BUT NOT STRICTLY

REVIEWED - TAKE THE LEAD: Given the recent success of television shows featuring obscure weather men murdering the rumba while fastened to insanely smiley professional dancers, it was, perhaps, inevitable that some bright spark would make a film in which a glamorous outsider - Antonio Banderas sounds about right - shows a body of underprivileged folk how to gain wisdom through competitive hoofing.

Take the Lead is inspired by the life of Pierre Dulaine, whose achievements teaching inner-city kids to dance were celebrated in the fine documentary Mad Hot Ballroom. But, in truth, it could have been made any time in the past 50 years. Meryl Streep taught the same kids to play the violin in Music of the Heart. Ted Danson recently cheered up another bunch of New York tykes by instructing them how to play chess in Knights of the South Bronx. It's about time we found a name for this stubbornly resilient genre.

Banderas's elegant aesthete is cycling through the city one evening when he happens upon an errant youth bashing all hell out of his principal's car. The next day, for reasons that are never satisfactorily explained, Antonio drops into the boy's school and offers his skills as a dance instructor. The principal (the perennially officious Alfre Woodard) suggests that he supervises the detention room. At first Banderas's grumpy students gripe about his taste in music, but eventually all are united in an attempt to triumph collectively at an uptown dance tournament.

Success in ballroom dancing depends upon organisation, discipline and close observation of particular rhythms. Take the Lead, though boosted by a charming performance from Banderas, achieves none of those objectives. The noisy clatter of subplots - one boy being drawn back to villainy, a posh female student of Banderas's going among his new charges - is allowed to completely overpower the central story following the students' advances on the dance floor.

Worse still, first-time director Liz Friedlander, a pop video specialist, shows no confidence in the power of ballroom dancing to hold her audience's attention and injects hip-hop moves into virtually every number.

Mind you, Take the Lead still beats an evening in front of Celebrity Jigs and Reels.