Leap!
Directed by: Éric Summer & Éric Warin
Written by: Carol Noble & Laurent Zeitoun and Éric Summer
Voices by: Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kate McKinnon, Mel Brooks, Maddie Ziegler, Terence Scammel, Tamir Kapelian, Julie Khaner, Joe Sheridan
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 24 Aug 2017
Written by: Carol Noble & Laurent Zeitoun and Éric Summer
Voices by: Elle Fanning, Nat Wolff, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kate McKinnon, Mel Brooks, Maddie Ziegler, Terence Scammel, Tamir Kapelian, Julie Khaner, Joe Sheridan
Animation/Adventure/Comedy - 89 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 24 Aug 2017
Two French orphans with big dreams run away to Paris because that is where one can become a ballerina and the other can become the world’s most famous inventor. On one hand, the orphanage is quite lenient as it seems to be a rite of passage to try and escape. Compared to Oliver Twist, this orphanage is no prison. On the other hand, Mother Superior’s life lessons emphasize the world is a rough place and has little room for dreams. There are perhaps a dozen other children, but they seem more than happy to grow up in the Brittany countryside ignoring their more adventurous roommates. For a school which only seems to have two teachers and a handful of students, their Hogwarts-sized dining hall is never seen without dirty dishes which must have just served a brigade of French legionnaires. Our heroes, Felicie (Elle Fanning, Live by Night) and Victor (Nat Wolff, Grandma) are also the only two we ever see on dish duty; must be punishment for the escape attempts.
Paris is the place to achieve your dreams. According to script, if you buckle down for a good seven days or so, you can go from raw potential to graceful ballerina over a few montages. Felicie grew up scrubbing dishes clad in patchwork orphan clothes. She has grit and hard work down into her bone marrow. Camille (Maddie Ziegler), her cosmopolitan, blonde competition, has a dance studio in her house and family connections to the top. But, the impeccably dressed dance master and choreographer explains dancing is more than feet and spinning; it comes from inside. A girl must dance with emotions - pain, fear, it doesn’t matter. Nailing the steps with a stoic spirit has no place on the stage. I wonder which girl has the most spirit inside of her - the plucky orphan or the sneering debutante who assures Felicie she is “nothing”.
Paris is the place to achieve your dreams. According to script, if you buckle down for a good seven days or so, you can go from raw potential to graceful ballerina over a few montages. Felicie grew up scrubbing dishes clad in patchwork orphan clothes. She has grit and hard work down into her bone marrow. Camille (Maddie Ziegler), her cosmopolitan, blonde competition, has a dance studio in her house and family connections to the top. But, the impeccably dressed dance master and choreographer explains dancing is more than feet and spinning; it comes from inside. A girl must dance with emotions - pain, fear, it doesn’t matter. Nailing the steps with a stoic spirit has no place on the stage. I wonder which girl has the most spirit inside of her - the plucky orphan or the sneering debutante who assures Felicie she is “nothing”.
It is never spoken, but the visual cues point to an early 1880s timeframe. The Eiffel Tower only has its four legs, but no tower. The Statue of Liberty is finishing construction but has yet to ship. Victor, the twitchy inventor, is an ideas man. He builds “chicken wings” which comes in handy a couple times when the orphan duo must leap of faith off a building or flimsy scaffolding. He thinks someone should build horseless carriages too. Yet, Felicie requires solo time to stumble into the Dance Academy and establish a rapport with a new mother figure, so the screenplay has pigeons knock poor Victor off a bridge or a gust of wind blow him away in a wing suit. Sure, it gets Victor off the screen, but these eye-rolling techniques ensure anybody who wants to take Leap! seriously for its dare to dream and follow your heart themes will remember Leap! is more slapstick pratfalls than meaning.
Watch the trailers and note Victor’s voice change. Dane DeHaan voiced him first for a version called International English and Nat Wolff does the honors for the American release. DeHaan’s voice is far deeper than Wolff’s who is more squeaky. We can only guess if this is one of the reasons Leap! was pushed back from its earlier March publicized release. The film is also called Ballerina in the rest of the world; the producers must believe Americans require a more commanding title. Leap! is a French production; therefore, the atmosphere is far more real than its American counterparts. No animals talk. No characters break out in song even though the production is stuffed full of safe, inspirational pop tracks from Sia and Carly Rae Jepsen. The architecture is also aligned for the time. I’ve never been inside, but I have a hunch the Paris Opera House is drawn the way it was in the 1880s.
It’s odd writing this about a cartoon, but the film comes off a bit too juvenile. Victor is bested by a flock of pigeons but still has the pubescent wherewithal to be jealous over Felicie and the Dance Academy’s best boy. Making room for two Titanic homages, the Academy’s Russian prince and Felicie ‘fly’ on top of the Opera House as if they were on the Titanic’s bow. In the second one, Victor shows Felicie Paris’s proletariat neighborhood and she dances around a blue collar bar just like Kate Winslet spins around the room in steerage class showing she can get down and drink with the under classes too. Leap! sports a can do attitude and affirms even girls from the most humble of backgrounds can break into elite settings if they have the talent and drive. Never painful, Leap! lacks that certain something which elevates other animated fare to higher tiers. More of a hop, Leap! never takes flight.
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