The true, rags-to-riches story of Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin - from rural China to ballet stardom as one of the world's greatest dancers.
In 1972, the 11-year-old Li (Huang Wenbin), living with his family of six siblings in eastern China, is selected as a student with promise by representatives of Madame Mao's Beijing Dance Academy. He attends their harsh and unforgiving school and becomes one of its star pupils. In '81, Li (now played by Chi Cao) is chosen to travel to the United States as part of a student exchange with the Houston Ballet Company. There he becomes a star when given a key role in a televised production of Die Fledermaus. Loving life in his new home, Li falls for fellow dancer, Elizabeth (Amanda Schull), and makes the decision to leave his old life behind and pursue a life of personal and creative freedom in America.
Ballet good. Story okay. Dialogue bad.
Such a simplistic review would be fitting of this straightforward and broad drama, which earnestly adapts a rags-to-riches autobiography into something plodding and predictable.
Here, China is packed with commie weasels, while the USA is the land of the free, home of the brave. A cowboy hat wearing, moustachioed Yank guffaws when central character Li asks him why he no like President. And the dialogue is terrible – Li prefers the West “because feel more free.”
But if you’re here to see ballet, then prepare to be impressed. Royal Birmingham Ballet Company dancer Chi Cao is earnest as Li, shining in several dance sequences. Director Bruce Beresford has a background in stage productions and decides to capture these sequences in simple wide shots, allowing the impressive choreography, including a fun scene about a new Chinese-style ballet to honour Chairman Mao, to be come to the fore.
Of all the performances, Bruce Greenwood (Star Trek) surprises as an effeminate dance instructor whose gesticulating is so flamboyant that his wrists are in danger of snapping off.
Mao’s Last Dancer is a very basic adaptation but it’s an inoffensive, easy watch. Recommended to fans of the book and/or ballet but probably won’t appeal to those who like their drama subtle.
By Andrew Hedley, Flicks.co.nz
are very good message in that movie. All the things Lee went through he never gave up!!!!
What a stupid review for such a touching film, it might not have been "arty" enough for the critic but audiences are loving it and we're all intelligent enough to realise that USA is not freedom anymore but it was then, to a poor Chinese boy who had nothing to land in USA must have been amazing and certainly better than Mao's China.
I loved this movie. Made me cry! Awesome.
This was a great feel-good movie. Highly recommended.
I really think this movie could use some more comedy and cheerfulness as this is a movie with a smelly child in it.
Feel-good movie about a Chinese dancer presses all the right buttons.
It's something of an irony that this film should be as wooden, formulaic and literal-minded as the improving Communist entertainment that, at one point, it implicitly criticises.
Beresford hasn't usually allowed himself to become this corny. This new film appears calculated to do two things: make everyone cry and maximise its appeal to those red-blooded, childlike Americans who think "freedom" is a US concept.
Told in flashback and starting with Cunxin's youth, it shows the horrors of living under the Mao regime in China. Li's plucked from a poor school and thrust into a dance academy where he trains as an apprentice.
Leaning heavily on rural childhood flashbacks and boot camp-like training as a teenager in Beijing, the story lights up when world-class performer Chi Cao leaps about as the adult Li, but is marred by lumpy melodrama when the music stops.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 4th Mar 2010.
Release date: March 4th 2010.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
