Strictly Ballroom

Baz Luhrmann’s directorial debut, Strictly Ballroom follows champion dancer Scott Hastings (Paul Mercurio) as he and a novice (Tara Morice’s Fran) prepare for a pivotal competition. It’s clear right from the get-go that Luhrmann isn’t looking to deviate from the flashiness that would come to define his career, as Strictly Ballroom‘s been hard-wired with as excessive and less-than-subtle a feel as one might’ve anticipated – with Luhrmann’s unabashedly broad approach reflected in everything from the larger-than-life performances to the hoary narrative twists to the unreasonably over-the-top instances of comedy. There’s little doubt, as a result, that it remains mostly impossible to connect to anything or anyone on screen from start to finish, which is a shame, certainly, given that both Mercurio and Morice are quite charming in their respective roles. (It’s clear, too, that the picture does boast a very small handful of effective and affecting sequences, with, especially, the various scenes set at Fran’s family home standing as an ongoing highlight.) Strictly Ballroom builds to a big finale that’s hardly able to pack the exciting, heartwarming punch that Luhrmann is clearly striving for, and it is, in the end, fairly apparent that the movie’s been designed to appeal solely to a very small and very specific portion of the viewing audience.

** out of ****