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20 out of 25 people found the following review useful: A joy to watch, 27 December 2007 Author: julieinbrittany from France
This reminded me of the Sunday afternoon dramas that the BBC used to show when I was young. There was nothing to dislike about this; it had charm, an improbable story, over-the-top characters and a real feel of the period it was set in - the thirties.There were lots of familiar faces; it was good to see Peter Bowles back on TV and anything with Victoria Wood has to be good. Emma Watston sustained the reputation she built up in the Harry Potter films - she is definitely going to be a big-name actress in the future. My personal accolade of Best Actress, however, went to Yasmin Paige who played Petrova, the girl who wants to be the aviator. You heard it here first folks - she is going to be a famous actress - and I'm not even her mother!
14 out of 16 people found the following review useful: TV films like this should really be more well-known., 6 March 2008 Author: Mightyzebra from Scotland
This is a TV film based on the book Ballet Shoes. It is about three adopted girls just after the First World War who all have different ambitions for the future.This may come as a shocking statement to some, but I think this deserved to be in the cinemas just as much as Spiderman 3, Enchanted and that sort of thing. I like those films as well of course, but this is really something.I like this for the brilliant acting from Emma Watson etc, the similarity to the Noel Streatfield book, a lot of the humour and the end of the story, it is one of my favourite parts of the film. It may miss bits out from the book, but those bits are the unnecessary parts and the parts left in are well-chosen. I cannot properly explain how and why I like this (the previous part of the paragraph was not totally what I meant), but I just recommend it to anyone who likes the book and people who like Emma Watson.At the very beginning of the film, a young girl with no surviving relatives other than her uncle, goes to live with him in his huge house of fossils. Her life becomes happier, but it soon turns out to be hard work again when on his travels around the world, the uncle sends her three baby girls. These girls grow up to have bright personalities and mixed interests and talents.Enjoy "Ballet Shoes"! :-)
17 out of 22 people found the following review useful: Another quality BBC production., 26 December 2007 Author: GonzoBarbossa from Mississippi Gulf Coast
I'm an American and I always enjoy the productions that the BBC plays. I was really excited about Ballet Shoes. I read the book when I was younger, my copy was destroyed in Katrina so I didn't have time to re-read it. So this review will be short and sweet and about the film itself. The film itself was well done, very seamless and didn't seem to leave any big gaps of unexplained information. The music really help set the mood. Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies set the mood for all the dancing, which as a dancer was pretty impressive for the three leads, especially Lucy Boyton. And Gershwin Along with Theo's radio help send in the time period (loved Theo!). The costumes and the sets were great. The acting was also fantastic. I don't remember a lot of the book, but I loved Madame Fidolia and Eileen Atkins was superb. I also loved Emilia Fox who is completely lovable and does a great job of bringing Sylvia alive. Richard Griffiths was adorable (horrible word choice, but that's how I feel) in an eccentric paleontologist way. I especially loved Theo and the Dr.'s, they were brought to life and very fun to watch.As for the young fossil girls I have to say Lucy Boyton was my favorite. She was spunky, funny and very Posy. She showed a maturity far beyond her years. Yasmin Page was very intense as Petrova and appeared very thoughtful and intelligent. She was fantastic. Emma Watson was a little inconsistent. She had moments where she did great, the audition scene was very good, and when she acted like a prima donna she really shone, otherwise it appeared she was just reading off of a piece of paper, her performance was a little wooden and didn't do it for me. All together the three girls had a great amount of chemistry along with Nana and Sylvia they felt like a family. Overall I thought an enjoyable, CLEAN, family film. Worth seeing.
13 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Sweet and Charming Little Film, 3 February 2008 Author: bondgirl6781 from Florida, USA
It is a rare treat to view a film like "Ballet Shoes." It's one of the those films where everyone has a piece of the cake of a happy ending but more importantly the film steers away from fluffy clichés and mushiness. The story takes place during the 1930s in a small house in London. Sylvia Brown (the luminous Emilia Fox), the niece of eccentric, traveling paleotolongist Great Uncle Matthew aka "Gum" who brings along from his travels three orphaned baby girls and it is Sylvia and her plucky Nana (Victoria Wood) that raise the three girls who grow up into fine young ladies with dreams and aspirations. The eldest is Pauline (Emma Watson aka "Hermoine Granger") dreams and aspires to be an actress, Petrova (Yasmin Paige) is the tomboyish one of the three and wants to become an aviator, and finally, Posy, the youngest and boldest one of the three has ambitions to become a ballet dancer. But this small family are facing harsh financial times and set their house for room and board. Enter the tenants that impact the girls' and Sylvia's lives: Mr. Simpson (the expressive Marc Warren), a man with a tragic past but a keen interest in cars and airplanes. He is someone Petrova can talk to; The retired scholarly professors Drs. Jakes and Smith (Gemma Jones and Harriet Walter) who take on the task of tutoring the girls; Theo Dane (Lucy Cohu), a professional dancer and actress, who makes the most profound influences on Pauline and Posy. The film tells how the girls struggle with Sylvia to save their home and at the same time pursue their dreams. To add to their struggles, Sylvia is ill and the girls do all they can to provide for her as well. The words I have to describe this little gem are charming and smart. With a wonderful cast delivering equally endearing performances. Emilia Watson is as always lovely and sweet as Sylvia a woman who selflessly gives and gives without ever once asking for repayment with Victoria Wood as Nana providing as a strong front for her and the household. The girls are wonderful: Emma Watson as Pauline is wonderful. She proved me wrong that she really can act and she definitely is more than the Harry Potter franchise. This is a performance that will hopefully carry her even further. Yasmin Paige as the big hearted and adventurous Petrova is a star in the making. Every scene she conveys such honesty and most of all she is real. Lucy Boynton as Posy is very lovely. She brings her character to life as the bold and daring young lady with such grace and maturity. Her scenes with Eileen Atkins, who plays Madame Fidolia a Russian dance instructor and head of a prestigious dance school, are wonderfully done and acted together. The film is sweet, smart, wonderfully acted and written without the added fluff and mumbo jumbo of made for TV films. The only tragedy was that this film wasn't released in the U.S.A theatrically or at least on HBO. This is a little gem I hope to own on DVD.
13 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Three adopted sisters try to achieve their goals with hard work and endurance, 26 December 2007 Author: mamarieken from Netherlands
One of my favourite books ever, having trained as a dancer and having children training as dancers we were glued to the box this evening, even though it was boxing day. Not exactly following the story of the book I loved it, and what is more, my adolescent children, cynical and critical, also loved it. Emma Watson is great, as are her 'adopted sisters', not one personage is out of place, and it filmed with loads of love and an eye for beauty and respect to Noel Streatfeild. I still slightly remember the 1975 series and this was just as sweet and nice. The dancing scenes are well executed, the dilemma's the girls are facing as well as those of Narnie are depicted in a good way. As in the book it is very much done with a slight tongue in cheek, never exaggerated feeling of love and harmony. Can't wait for the release of the DVD.
8 out of 10 people found the following review useful: Stage school becomes soap opera, 6 January 2008 Author: Igenlode Wordsmith from England
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
It's hard for me to judge how this would go down as a drama in its own right to someone who hadn't read the book; as an adaptation it's heavily 'sexed-up' in several senses at once, and I'm afraid thoroughly irritated me by the end.Filming novels about people growing up is always going to be a problem, and I accept that the timescale is inevitably going to have to be compressed if you want to avoid casting multiple children in each role. It's probably unfair to object to sallow, high-boned Petrova being cast as a dumpy, pallid child; given modern standards of beauty, 'too fat' is probably the equivalent to the 'too thin' given as unattractive in Streatfield's era. If you've decided to cast Emma Watson, it's probably impossible to portray Pauline as making her stage success playing a plausible boy in Shakespeare's Princes in the Tower; the novel's Pauline is short and physically immature at fourteen, while Emma is all too obviously none of the above. And it's perhaps impossible to show the single-minded Posy on screen without making her appear hopelessly unpleasant... although Pauline doesn't come across too well here either, thanks to plot changes and excisions...But this adaptation for me seemed to miss out on the very atmosphere of the book, while introducing a lot of extraneous sexual plot lines to compensate for all the childhood material they decided to miss out. It ceases to be a story about growing up; it becomes a story about pairing-off, with some heavy modern politics added in. (Poor Mr Simpson loses his wife and comfortable middle-class lifestyle as a planter in Malaya, and becomes a tragic figure born into deepest poverty; the theme of the children's own poverty is excised -- confusing and largely obliterating the Winifred plot line -- and replaced by the device of inflicting Sylvia with tuberculosis as a requirement for earning money; Theo Dane becomes an ageing man-mad flapper; Posy's various nude impersonations (which I wouldn't expect to be kept in) are instead supplanted by the two older girls playing a gratuitous nude scene in a shared bath; the Hollywood director is improbably black; etc.) The production is clumsily 'period' in a way that the original story never is, trying far too hard to establish its setting by shoe-horning in props and references in the manner of a bad historical novel. (Re-reading the book afterwards to judge whether my irritation was justified, I was however amused to note that Noel Streatfield makes a single allusion to Amy Mollison, whom it is now apparently unthinkable to refer to -- as her contemporaries actually did -- by her married name...)I suppose I just felt resentful that a book I'd liked as a child had seemingly been hijacked by someone with an 'agenda'. An unfair judgement, I expect, but it really did put my back up, and lost most of the story's charm along the way. It's been rewritten as 21st-century girly drama, which the original really wasn't.
3 out of 5 people found the following review useful: ~*-It's not just Watson-*~, 19 July 2008 Author: Aura V from Romania
Yes, I wanted to watch this movie because of Emma Watson. She is a few month older than I am and I've liked Harry Potter since the first movie came out. Well... Now I'm 17 and I'm not really interested in Harry Potter anymore, but I'll still watch the other movies after they come out.I've never red "Ballet Shoes" nor heard of Noel Streatfeild. I am not from the UK so don't judge me for that. After watching this movie, I'm going to see if I can find this novel, the movie was really interesting.At first, I thought Emma is horrible and she has so little screen time and I expected so much more... but after the first 20 minutes, I was thrilled with the story and I completely forgot I was watching it for Emma's performance. I almost forgot it was Emma at all. She did a good job acting, she really got out of Hermione, considering this is her first role apart from Harry Potter. I am sure she will be even better in the future, if she will be playing different characters.The rest of the cast was good, also, I really liked Emilia Fox and I've never seen anything with her before. The director did a really good job and the costumes were wonderful. The feelings the movie sent me were also powerful, I've never shed a tear during a movie in years....
almost an amazing film, 6 December 2009 Author: Reverend McGraw from United States
I admit the only reason i watched this was because Emma Watson was in it and i wanted to see her work outside of the Harry Potter franchise to see if she could handle another character, and she did amazingly well. All the acting was great, but the only thing i think is that it didn't flow too well. It just seemed to not flow as well as a story should. The story was good, but it should have been handled better, and also character development needed to be improved on some characters. But overall it is delightful and has plenty of lessons in it. All of the characters seemed real, when i was watching it, i could really understand their struggles and their dreams. It seemed as if it was more than just a story. I was definitely glad to see Richard Griffiths in it. It flowed well enough, but like i mentioned earlier it could have flowed better, and i don't like how short it was. I felt they didn't put enough information in it to really define how the careers of each girl went.
Charming and well acted, if not strictly true to the book!, 1 July 2009 Author: TheLittleSongbird from United Kingdom
I will confess I haven't read the book for a while, but I do remember it was a wonderful read, with great characters and a sweet story. The TV adaptation was just as charming as the book. The only real thing that undermines it is the changes to the story, so some scenes didn't seem as developed as others, though I will say I am not the sort of person who criticises a film or TV drama on its unfaithfulness to the source material. The adaptation does look lovely, with some stunning costumes and some nice locations. The direction mayn't be the best ever in a TV drama, but I have seen worse in films alone. Remember the incompetent direction in that abomination Home Alone 4? Anyway, back to Ballet Shoes; I thought the acting was excellent. Emma Watson, Yasmin Page and Lucy Boynton are very charming as three ambitious young girls, and they are solidly supported by Emilia Fox(the actress Joanna David's daughter), Gemma Jones, Eileen Atkins and Harriet Walter, and even Richard Griffiths is subdued to a secondary role. The actors are aided by a well written script, and some bits are even touching; I did feel sorry for Petrova when her dancing mentor had a stroke during the ballet performance. I thought that Ballet Shoes was a charming adaptation of an excellent book, but I don't think it is the best TV drama ever made; one truly remarkable TV drama of recent times that does spring to mind is the recent Occupation. 9/10 Bethany Cox.
My New Favorite Movie, 19 September 2008 Author: sashalakeside from San Diego CA
This is such a wonderful movie. I really wasn't sure if i was going to like this movie from just seeing the trailers. Let me tell you if you like films in the Disney type genre you will love this movie , too. The acting is so brilliant. Emma Watson really breaks out of the Hermione role and is magnificent in Ballet Shoes as Pauline Fossy , really wonderful. Lucy Boynton, who plays Posy Fossil the ballet prodigy is spot on with all her lines and delivers two really big laughs. Too funny. Yasmin Paige , the third fossil 'sister' is very good at the intellectual role playing and no doubt we will see her and Boynton on the big screen again very soon. For a few minutes i was worried that the story might turn depressing and end on a bad note but the most wonderful thing about this movie , besides the acting of Emma Watson and Lucy Boynton was that , alas , it had a very happy ending. If u have a big screen TV it really is wonderful to see all the beautiful costumes and vintage furniture , etc.I HIGHLY recommend this movie to anyone who loves a " feel good " type movie and if you are a fan of Emma Watson you will love her in Ballet Shoes. Run , don't walk , to your local video store and pick this one up. My only complaint i wish it was longer because i didn't want this film to end , no kidding !!!
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