Driven to Dance

I enjoy good films about dance. The fact that this one includes Juliet Doherty convinced me to watch it. Unfortunately, it was a disappointment. Though the main character, Paige (Doherty), has a passion for dance, the real focus of the film is the conflict between Paige and her mother, Lynda (Kaitlyn Black).

Paige's parents are separated and on the verge of divorce. Lynda is a bitter woman who takes her frustrations out on her children, especially Paige. Lynda's behavior is abusive, and others see that, but can do little to intervene. Paige's dance instructor does what he can and, eventually, makes a positive impact.

Doherty's dancing is the best part of the film, but the entire film feels incomplete and the ending is abrupt. See "High Strung Free Dance" for a better representation of Doherty's talents.

I am familiar with the Arizona Master Dance academy. They turn out beautiful dancers. I would have like to have seen more dancing. I do not like the story. Ballet dancers mums and dads would be supportive of their children. The other review spoke of anorexia... Truth in that ...but I guess writer was trying to get the carrot thing in ... Truth is San Francisco Ballet would never hire an anorexic dancer. No company would. Good effort to show a bit of something... Next time show class training in real order for people to get what athlete's we are... plies to tendus etc. To Grands batement, to doing things right demonstrating our hard work.

The main character is a beautiful dancer, but the acting is awful. The characters who don't have to dance were horrible actors which doesn't make sense because they didn't need to compromise on that. I guess it's the directing too. It's very slow moving and I almost shut it off. I also didn't like how the character doesn't eat. That should have been addressed. I expected her to faint or something, but nope. Not cool. Also the mother makes no sense. If she never had a job or did anything with her life then why on earth didn't she watch her daughter dance? You'd think she'd want her daughter to have opportunities-the whole fear of failure thing on the mom's end made no sense to me. The mom also seemed super young. 36? Real enough but wow my mom was like 50 when I was that age. Anyhow I feel like teenagers will like it. It's like a step up from the American girl movies and it's clean enough.

Juliet is a beautiful ballerina and my young dancer enjoyed the brief moments of dance. Everything else was awful...stilted speech and awkward scenes. It was painful to watch. 😞

Okay, so the dancing part is good, real dancers, thank god! The acting, on the other hand, is horrible - so stiff, they all sound like robots. The mother is absolutely horrible, I usually have sympathy for "bad" characters, but I had none for her, she's just not a good character.. at all. I do, however, like the "storyline" in general, but it could've been a lot better with the right actors!