Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointing adaptation of the book, 27 Jul 2005
I loved the book "Ballet Shoes" as a child and still read it from time to time as a "comfort book". This BBC adaptation is disappointing. It has cut out chunks of the book and altered other parts of it considerably and some characters have been eliminated. There's not enough dancing and frequently when there is, the feet are cut off. There are no scenes either of the children's actual theatre performances. Why? Some characters are exactly as I would have imagined from the book - Dr Jakes, Mr Simpson and Mme Fidolia are excellent and little Posy is delightful. However, Sylvia is even sillier than in the book - a complete ninny, helpless and ineffectual, yet stubborn and narrow-minded with big watery blue eyes and an insipid smile. Poor
Angela Thorne having to portray such a profoundly irritating character!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More book-oriented, but marred by low budget, 16 April 2008
Ballet fans and book fans may well enjoy this better than the new adaptation. The dialogue is meatier (though too theatrical), and there is a good deal of dancing, though mostly exercises and a couple of audition shots - we hear about, but are not shown, the romance of ballet.
There is also a lot of invented Mme. Fidolia monologue, which will probably bore many, but may be music to the ears of the young ballet student who likes a little moral fibre to her dreams. Mme Fidolia's character dominates the movie, and she comes close to pulling off those impossible monologues.
This is at the expense of the acting though - we end up with nothing to show us why acting might fascinate Pauline. Apart from moving the mouth instead of the feet, Pauline and Posy are therefore too similar. Petrova is given a good part, thoughtfully adapted to the needs of TV.
Director Timothy Combe went on to work on Doctor Who, which may be why he does so much better with the eccentric characters than the more conventional ones - Dr. Jakes is a joy, though I miss her sidekick.
Visually, the small room sets are claustrophobic, just when we want to see the children moving out into the world. The very warm lighting and "'70s natural" approach to the main characters, plus the director's apparent inexperience in overcoming the TV serial format, have led to a low-key production that doesn't have a lot of dramatic build-up.
The children's acting is indeed a bit stagey (the immobile centre-front camera makes the whole thing look oddly unnatural, considering the effort made to give the sets a lived-in, understated look) but it compares well enough to the 2007 adaptation.
This adaptation, made in the "nurture greater than nature" '70s, turns away from Streatfeild's portrayal of the conflict between looks and skills, natural talent and training. However, it's perhaps more rewarding for ballet-mad girls for that reason.
The new adaptation, on the other hand, comes down firmly in the "naturally gifted" camp, and the only dancing is, tellingly, presented so unrealistically that it might be a dream. More annoyingly, it just has to invent a romance, an unnneeded sugar coating of Streatfeild's portrayal of the between-the-wars "world without men" that keep the book alive in the memories of grown women. The girls are shown as full of energy and drive, so it's a pity to then see single women stripped of their strength and energy, and either caricatured or forced to chase every passing male character!
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