Driving by her deep love and will of becoming a professional dancer, Tara Webster, a young teenager beautiful and talented girl, who joins a ballet school, in order to achieve her dream, and she does well, but once everything changes and turns upside down, when she faces an accident that prevents her from achieving her dream.
Strauss is a writer of real flair. A former teen dancer, she knows the milieu like the back of her hand and is not ashamed to take delight in an all-Aussie phrase like "pity pash".
Subversive entertainment it ain't. But nor is this well-paced yarn - with pleasing albeit narrowly scoped performances from a perky cast - bereft of pleasantries and surprises.
I liked the Emma Stone-Ryan Gosling song and dance romance-drama, but for me Dance Academy feels more real. It has something about it that is more dramatic, more emotional, more complex.
Walker exhibits admirable restraint in the face of such potentially overwrought romantic tropes, refusing to milk the emotional moments, encouraging his actors to underplay the key scenes. The characters' self-deprecating humour also serves the film well.
The old-fashion story path navigated here (much of which takes place in the US) is a lot more downbeat and realistic about the plight of young performers than many viewers will expect. The movie as a whole is all the better for it.
The dialogue isn't exactly sparkling. It's matter-of-fact at best, cliched at worst, but Tara and friends are easy to like. The ballet movie tradition is well served.
In the final stanza of "Dance Academy" it finally becomes the movie that you're hoping it will be; it's a crowd pleaser that has surprises up its sleeve.
