Leap!

Leap!
Director: Éric Summer, Éric Warin
Studio: Weinstein Company (US)
Leap takes a good dancing practice!
Sounds like a plan for people who wanted to do something their heart desires and passions for. Gives me a good thought based on my own futures to have and struggle on, even on every aspect of dream. In reality, it may take some time to follow the passions like it was a staircase, which is hard work and really stressful.

This film tells a female orphan, Félicie (voiced by Elle Fanning in US), who dreams of becoming a ballerina based on hope from her mother through the 1880’s period. They are two main problems in this film: at the beginning, she has a hard time escaping, along with her best friend, Victor (voiced by Dane DeHaan, Nat Wolff in US), and she lacks formal training and ballerina techniques and moves.

After escaping successfully, they find themselves in Paris to find hope and what they’re looking for. Victor goes for inventing start-up adventure while Félicie is entering her ballerina dance floor. Throughout the entire film, Félicie assumes the best dancer’s identity to join the ballet class, but had some trouble with ballet lessons while being judged by a famous male choreographer, who eliminates all worst ballet students and decides to select one of the ballet students to perform the Nutcracker. Later, she improves herself each day, trained by a former dancer, in order to perform the Nutcracker while trying to avoid elimination and prevent anyone who knows about her real identity. When she is nearly there for the Nutcracker show, her real identity is revealed and she got sent back to orphanage, but returned to Paris to follow her passion and dreams. At the end, Félicie succeeds ballerina technique with a great astonishing move she have showed to the students and the choreographer and got into the Nutcracker show like she always dream to.

This film was okay with the emotional plot and characters, especially the best female dancer who Félicie stole the identity from. I did like the music, and some interesting points about the relationship between Félicie and Victor as it is the main conflict about how she could live of being a friend while being a ballerina at the same time. Friendships can be quite distracting from dreams but it is still part of everyone’s life, deep in the heart. Like “The Polar Express,” there’s no greater gift than friendship. Throughout the film, I also enjoyed at overseeing the elements combined and resemble from Disney’s “Cinderella,” “The Little Prince,” “Corpse Bride,” “The Boxtrolls,” and the upcoming Pixar fantasy film, “Coco.” Sounds like a colorful twist for children.

However, I didn’t admired the scripting as well as some points of the film as this film contains several selfish and cruel moments from the real, identified female dancer and her mother, which had a scary look like the stepmother from Disney’s animated classic, Cinderella. The Russian boy doesn’t seem like a good fit as it is distraction from her hopes and the scene interfering with that Russian boy and Victor. It was a backfire for the two.

Overall, this film was good, but I wouldn’t say it’s horrible. This film actually teach people to follow their dreams and their perspective ways when they’re growing up to become who they want to be or somebody famous. It adds a good detail to the plot to see what is happening to the world when they want to get outside their comfort zones. You’ll enjoy this.

Grade: B-

(Review by Henry Pham)