Theatrical Review: Leap!

Date: Saturday August 26 2017
Time: 11:55am
Location: Cinemark Cinema in Stroud Mall
Party: 2 (my sister & I)

Directors: Eric Summer and Eric Warin
Writers: Eric Summer (based on his idea), Laurent Zeitoun and Carol Noble
Composer: Klaus Badelt

Cast:
Felicie- Elle Fanning
Victor- Nat Wolff
Odette- Carly Rae Jepsen
Camille- Maddy Zeigler
Merante, the choreography- Terrence Scammell
Mother Superior/Regine/Felicie's mom- Kate McKinnon
Luteau- Mel Brooks

Duration: 89 minutes (+ 7 trailers)
Opening Remarks

First off, I listed the venue for the first time in a long time for a very particular reason. A particularly sad one.
Our super local cinema was one of several businesses in our local flea market affected by a fire and is one of such businesses that may never recover. It happened a couple weeks after we saw Despicable 3... it sucks. Granted, it wasn't perfect. We've had our share of sound issues, screen splits and so on. A couple of times when the movie was shut off prematurely or we had to remind people we were still there. But it was SUPER convenient and I'm going to miss it.

The mall is a good 20 minutes away from the house and downtown traffic can have its issues every now and then. But it's a really nice place. Can't beat the cushy stadium seating. And it was the two of us and two other twosomes within this one theater, so it was pretty cool.

Probably the one negative... there are a million trailers. Not commercials. Trailers. And unlike with "The Judge," where I managed to write them all down, I was just lucky I was able to count these.

Trailers

A bunch were animated and a bunch had real people. That much I remember for sure.

First up- "Daddy's Home 2"... how this movie got a sequel is as beyond me as Adam Sandler still being able to make movies when most of them are terrible...
Mark Walberg is the dad and Will Ferrell is the stepdad. But this time, their dads come into the picture for some holiday. Walberg's dad is Mel Gibson and Ferrell's dad is John Lithgow.
I'd never go to a theater to see this (certainly not traveling 20 minutes down the road to see it)- but Mel Gibson had some funny moments in this trailer pretty much side-eying Will Ferrell and saying to Mark Walberg "this [idiot] is raising your kids."
Mel Gibson has had his issues and RDJ has been lobbying for the past few years to get him acting jobs (paying it forward after Mel Gibson did the same for him after the final rehab stint)... but as crappy as this movie might wind up being, it's at least an opportunity Mel Gibson could possibly use... I'm spending too much time on this, moving on.

Next- a "My little pony" movie... yeah, this is getting a theatrical release. It looks super cute, but maybe not something I'd ever see unless it happened to be on TV and I happened to have nothing else I need to see.

Beyond that, I don't remember the order of these trailers, but this is what I remember.

Animated movie- Duck Duck Goose where this inept goose winds up becoming dad to a couple of ducklings who sound oddly mature for ducklings who'd recently hatched.
Animated movie- Ferdinand where a tame bull is sent off to be a bullfighter and a bunch of hedgehogs want to help get back to his girl... the hedgehogs had some funny moments, so this could potentially be a good movie

Animated movie- Disney's "Coco" where a live boy finds himself in the world of "The Day of the Dead" and meets his family... I still don't know why the hell the movie is called "Coco." I'm too lazy to Google it :P I don't care that much

animated movie- Lego Ninjago... my sister wants to see this one... she's really familiar with the series. This focuses on the green ninja Lloyd who has no friends beyond the other ninjas cuz his dad happens to be the main villain. The trailers feature the two of them meeting and Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood" playing (so excited for her new album...).

and I think there's one other live-action movie and I can't remember what it is. Probably wasn't important.

The Main Event

Felicie and Victor are best friends who grew up at an orphanage and both have big dreams. Victor to become a famous inventor and Felicie to become a ballerina and enroll in Paris's world famous dance school.
Once they manage to break out of the orphanage (and evade the caretaker, Mr. Luteau- whose physical appearance reminds me a lot of Richard Griffiths in the Harry Potter movies), the story can finally begin.

One thing that didn't make it into the trailers- Felicie commits identity theft to get into the ballet school. (Maybe not the first time in a kid's movie, but it kinda shocked me). But considering whose identity she steals, we can let it go.
Felicie befriends Odette, who is the cleaner at the dance school and she asks to work as her assistant. Her other job is with this mean rich lady, Regine, who had bought her daughter Camille into the dance school. After meeting Camille and Camille breaks the music box her mother gave her, Felicie kinda gets her revenge by using Camille's letter of acceptance to get into the school.

A theme repeated throughout the movie- skill vs. passion. Felicie has all the passion in the world, but she's a bit of a klutz and has no professional training. But with Odette's help (she was a dancer before an accident stole that ability from her), she works hard and makes it through week after week. She also falls for Russian dancer Rudy while Victor is trying to get the courage to tell her that he likes her.
Meanwhile, Camille and her mother do find out what happens and the situation gets a little more dire: Felicie needs to nail the final audition to play Clara in the Nutcracker or she gets kicked out of the school.
And there's also another point where we see that Camille has the skill but no passion. She dances because her mom makes her. (Maddy Zeigler, who plays Camille, was on "So you think you could dance" last Monday night explaining it just like that)

Overall, the movie was great. The animation for the people had come so far. It's amazing how realistic it is. Felicie is a plucky fun heroine that a lot of girls will be able to relate to. Her friend Victor is a great friend to her (able to fix her music box, which is a very important trinket to her).
Carly Rae Jepsen, I have not liked for years because of "Call Me Maybe." It's catchy (heck, it went viral at the 2012 Olympics and was the song of that summer), but the lyrics are so badly written. She'd had other songs, but the radio only plays that one. But since she started doing acting roles, I've come around. She was perfect as Frenchie in Fox's rendition of "Grease." And she's great here. I don't know how old Odette is supposed to be, but she could easily be the same age she is.

In "Legally Blonde," Elle Woods said during her valedictorian speech that first impressions aren't always correct.
This goes on to be true about a couple characters in this movie and in a good way.
Not to spoil anything, but Luteau winds up being helpful to Felicie later in the movie and despite his gruff exterior, there's a heart underneath there.

The biggest surprise for me was the choreographer, Merante. I thought he was played by Tim Curry because he sounded like Nigel Thornberry (he wasn't), but the impression I got was that he was stuffy and he wasn't going to budge in his opinion of Felicie (although to be fair- she was pretending to be Camille and he didn't like how her mother bought her way into the school). But he does come around. He also is very accommodating to Odette- which made me wonder if they had a history or they were related. He did some kind things for her because she was a dancer he admired and he wanted to help her if she needed it now that she couldn't dance anymore.
There's a great scene where Felicie puts on a performance at a bar with Victor and he sees her and slips in a compliment... that made me smile and hastily clap a couple times.

The review in the local paper seemed to have only one issue with the movie- the historical inaccuracies. The movie takes place in the 1870's. Someone's wearing denim. And :groan: someone says it's hammer time...

The one negative I found personally, which kinda sucked the fun out of it a few times... Camille's CRAZY stage mom. Maybe it's the hairstyle, but she reminds me of Lady Tremaine (aka the Evil Stepmother from Disney's "Cinderella"). The cutthroat attitude and the absolute meanness. There were no redeemable qualities about her whatsoever and all villains should have something in their background to explain why they are who they are.
Not only do her actions completely derail the movie halfway through (that whole 3rd act issue that's been cliché for years)... towards the end, she's threatening bodily injury and there's a hammer involved.
She said "it's hammer time" and I groaned so hard thinking "she totally ruined that for me"...

she didn't... I said "it's hammer time" about something a couple hours later and still got joy from it.

I don't know- maybe it's just a personal peeve. Up there with villains who are depicted with no weak points so it's impossible for the heroes to defeat them. [And also to derail my earlier point- it was explained why the "House of Night" villain Neferet became evil, but I still hated how she had no weak points that the good guys could take advantage of to defeat her]

I guess what I'm saying... the villain was simply an archetype. She wasn't three dimensional like the protagonist was and that's not good.

Grade: A-