Grammar Police Officer

Center Stage

This is a pretty cheezy movie but I really like it. It's a dance movie and it showcases the personal journey of one dancer who has bad feet but loves to dance, while it has about 3 secondary storylines going on.

The star of the movie is Jody Sawyer, the girl with the bad foot. She is also very pretty. She works had for a year to become a dancer of perfect technique. She fails at that, but gets seduces by the young upstart dancer (Cooper Neilsen) who is the pretty boy of the company. He then casts her in his dance where she gets to dance a non-traditional ballet. Her dream her whole life has been to be in the American Ballet Company, but she ends up turning down the offer to be in their corps and decides to dance with Cooper in his new company while spurning his attentions. (She finally gets to dance where she is appreciated, and if he loves her only for her dancing then she doesn't want him.)

There is also Maureen Cummings, who has been in the American Ballet Academy since she was 9. She has perfect technique but is a very unkind person whose whole life revolves around making the company...until she meets Jim Gordon, a medical student at Columbia. By the end of the movie, she realizes that there is no point in dancing (even if she is good) if she doesn't have the heart. She also defeats bulimia!

There is Eva Rodriguez, a dancer with attitude. She is from the wrong side of the tracks, and her attitude sets her against her ballet teachers and the director of the company. She eventually shapes up, but by then it is too late for her to get a part in the student workshop. However, Maureen comes to her aid by dropping out of the ballet and giving her starring role to Eva! Maureen gets to quit dancing while Eva gets to dance. Eva is so good that the director ends up giving her a spot in the company.

There is also Sergei, a Russian who ends up going to San Francisco with his girlfriend; Emily, who gets kicked out of American Ballet Academy because she gains weight (and who acts as a wake-up call for Maureen the Bulimic); Eric O'Jones (the O is in honor of Oprah, his idol), who sprains his ankle in the final rehearsal for Jody's ballet but gets a spot in the company anyway; and Charlie, Jody's real love interest who helps her realize that dancing doesn't need to be a stressor, but can be her outlet. He is very cute.

Yes, it is shallow and predictable and cheezy. But I like it; there is dancing and not every movie can be an artsy-fartsy brainiac fest (like Memento or Dark City).

I have 2 favorite parts: one is in Cooper's ballet, the scene where Jody wears the blue dress and she and Charlie and Cooper have a pas de trois. Basically, they fight over the girl. It's really pretty, I think, and I really like the corps' choreography as they walk by, being passers-by. The other part is the scenes at the very end of the movie, under the credits. It shows where everyone ends up after their tumultuous year of school. They are all so happy, finally in the places they belong.

I also like Jody's dress in the scene where she turns down the spot in the American Ballet Company. It's cute.