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When it comes to dance, the emotional and visual impact is so powerful that even an average film can arouse our affection simply by showing it. Because exclamation points are not only typographically irritating, but they also represent a shallow hucksterism that undermines the entire project, “Leap!” is a mediocre film whose title will henceforth be typed without the exclamation point.
In this story of a plucky orphan from Brittany who tries to make it as a ballet star in Paris, the action takes place almost 150 years ago, and there is no magic, talking animals, pop culture references that will be out of date six months from now, or any of the other tics that are common to so many American-made cartoon features done in the Pixar-DreamWorks-BlueSky mold are present. It also has the pedigree of a French entertainment conglomerate, Gaumont, and its technical credits are replete with names from the French-speaking world. As a result, there’s every reason to hope for something different from the norm; something culturally specific and visually exciting; something with a lively brain and a beating heart—if not an eccentric gem like “The Triplets of Belleville” or “A Cat in Paris,” then perhaps a crowdpleaser that’s as simultaneously accessible and endearing as a second-tier Pixar release like “Finding Dory” or “The Good Dinosaur.”
Unfortunately, this was not the case. Éric Summer and Eric Warin, as well as their collaborators, appear determined to suffocate an original premise and a number of promising characters by plagiarizing every available page from the playbook of a substandard American studio animated feature, from nonstop CGI-powered, 3-D animation clichés (montage sequences set to contemporary power-pop ballads; gratuitous “slow motion” to highlight big moments; “helicopter shots” pointlessly flying around buildings and characters) to
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These and other major characters are defined solely by their roles in the film’s plot: Felicie (Elle Fanning), a want tobe ballerina who steals another girl’s identity in order to study at the Paris Opera Ballet; Victor (Nat Wolff), an aspiring inventor; Odette (Carlie Rae Jepsen), Felicie’s mentor and soon-to-be mother figure; Régine Le Haut’s hateful ballerina daughter Camille (Maddie Zie However, in contrast to, well, good animated films aimed at family audiences, “Leap” appears to be stuck in its attempts to go beyond the fundamentals of animation. Aside from using physical infirmities such as crossed or lazy eyes, speech impediment, and gluttonous tendencies, it also attempts to bolster their characterization by focusing on physical infirmities such as gap teeth, and an irritating laugh. There’s even a one-scene cameo by a mail courier with swishy-gay mannerisms straight out of a ’80s-movie. In the event that this gambit fails, the film will latch onto bits of allegedly comic business that aren’t all that funny to begin with, and which become less funny the more often “Leap” repeats them.
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As an example, Victor’s social and physical ineptitude is exemplified by the fact that he bangs his head on the same church bell three times in the film’s opening section and then stumbles, tumbles and crashes through every scene in which he appears thereafter, when not stammering and stumbling over his words and then vocally chastising himself for messing them up. It is only Odette who fared slightly better, primarily as a result of the sensitive line readings provided by Jepsen and the long face and sad, dark eyes that the animators gave her. Her tragic secret is obvious from the moment we meet her, and the film — which appears to be adamant about not crediting either parents or children for movie-going intelligence — portrays her inevitable backstory as deep and powerful, when it is actually far less compelling than the relationship she develops naturally with Félicie through their shared love of dance. The vocal performance of Mel Brooks as M. Luteau, the outwardly hard-nosed orphanage supervisor with a secretly soft heart, infuses him with a bit of life beyond his exopthalmia and hunched-over posture; however, he is undercut by throwaway dialogue that sounds as if it was dropped into the soundtrack during post-production to explain things that don’t need explaining. Félicie exclaims, “I knew you weren’t as bad as people said!” when Luteau saves the heroine’s life in the final act—a moment that anyone who has seen a movie before, any movie, will eagerly anticipate.
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Because it combines a demonstration of unwavering determination with that tried-and-true sports-and-arts movie staple, the training montage, in which new skills are practiced and eventually masterfully executed, Félicie’s story becomes compelling in and of itself. The most compelling aspect of “Leap” is its portrayal of the dance world, both then and now, as exhilarating and cruel: a kind of altar on which fanatical young people are willing to sacrifice their bodies to achieve success. Anyone who has danced or been close to a dancer can attest to the emotional truth of the scenes in which Odette puts Félicie through her paces, as well as the knife-twisting comments made by Mérante (Terence Scammell), the choreographer of the Paris Opera Ballet, as he selects potential “Swan Lake” leads from a lineup of hopefuls.
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However, “Leap” does not appear to comprehend how unique these elements are. To avoid wasting the time and energy of its brave, tough, purehearted heroine by devoting the majority of the film to her artistic and emotional development as well as the indignities and injuries she suffers as a result of her art, the film keeps wasting her (and our) time with theoretically comic or suspenseful subplots that we’ve seen done many times before, albeit with significantly more wit and feeling. Because neither young man appears charismatic enough to steal the spotlight away from Félicie’s true, great love, dance (Tamer Kapelian’s Rudolph), the love triangle between the bumbling best friend-nice guy (Victor) and the tall, blond, full-of-himself rival (Tamer Kapelian’s Rudolph) quickly becomes tedious. The sneering, shallow hatred of the rival’s mother, Régine, is even more exasperating to deal with. If her constant physical humiliation of Félicie and Odette, who are literally her chambermaids, hadn’t already cemented our connection to her as Cinderella’s stepmother, she’s been given the hell-pit eyes of the fairy tale character and a jet-black version of her tumorous hairdo.
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A long action sequence set beneath and near the just-completed Eiffel Tower and the unfinished Statue of Liberty culminates in a bizarre climax in the film’s finale, which delays the heroine’s understudy-who-gets-a-big-break debut (another ancient cliché that we can see coming from a mile away and cannot wait to see and revel in) for a long action sequence set beneath and near the just-completed Eiffel Tower and the unfinished Statue It appears to be primarily concerned with demonstrating that Victor was the right guy for Félicie from the beginning. Victor’s vindication is the last thing on our minds at that point, given how invested we have become in her quest, despite all of the prefabricated storytelling obstacles that have been placed in her path to making her debut. Félicie is deserving of a better life. The same can be said for dance.
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