Cheers for Mad Hot Ballroom

New Year's Day was tough. We couldn't motivate to ski and found ourselves lounging at noon. Lazy and full from breakfast we decided that it was acceptable to further waste daylight by watching this movie. But a waste of time it was not.
Mad Hot Ballroom grabbed me from the first dance lesson scene and kept me cheering, sighing and even crying. The film follows threee New York 5th grade classrooms as they prepare for a citywide ballroom dancing competition. By now, all of you blog readers know I am a softie. But, MHB, captures the exuberence and fragility of youth. Even more effective is its potrayal of the best kind of teacher. The teacher that recognizes the many perils awaiting kids and seeks a way to guide them towards some goodness. The beauty of MHB is that it does not patronize its young subjects but lingers on their insights and wisdom. At the end of the film I wanted more of the student's biographies. What happens? Where do they go from here? Alas, there was no special feature to tell the tale. What the viewer can take from the movie is an appreciation of life. Who among us has not strived for something and fallen short? Or, other times succeeded. Who do we have to thank for our inspiration?