I don't know about you, but nothing makes me doubt the quality of a film more than the phrase "a heart-warming family drama". Far too many times that ends up meaning that the movie is going to be mawkishly sentimental and have all the emotional depth of a Hallmark greeting card. Rarely has such a movie had much basis in reality or any other redeeming qualities that might compensate for a simplified view of the world that renders everything in pastel shades with all the passion of life squeezed out of it.
For some reason that type of movie or television show seems to thrive on the North American side of the Atlantic Ocean. Over in Britain they do their best to avoid what filmmakers on this side of the ocean do out of habit and laziness. Laziness because instead of bothering to try and make something of quality they merely superimpose a new mask on an old form resulting in characters who are types instead of people, and situations that revolve around a major holiday or family crisis. Of course by the end of the movie all the problems are resolved and everybody sits down to a (insert holiday of choice here) meal that can't be beat.
I can't offer any explanation as to why it's the case — maybe because the Brits don't celebrate Thanksgiving — but the majority of the family dramas filmed over there, at the very least, don't tend to insult the intelligence of their viewers. This was all driven home to me once again through watching the newly released DVD version of the British television movie Ballet Shoes released in North America by Koch Vision.
Based on the novel of the same name by British author Noel Streathed and set in the 1930s, it's the tale of three orphaned girls adopted by an eccentric adventurer/paleontologist named Matthew Brown (Richard Griffiths - Vernon Dursley in various Harry Potter movies) who disappears when they are still infants leaving them to be raised by his great-niece Sylvia (Emilia Fox).
As befits the wards of a man of his profession, one of his last gifts to them before he disappears is to give them the last name of Fossil. After that quick introduction we jump forward in time to when the three, Pauline (Emma Watson - Hermione of Harry Potter fame), Petrova (Yasmin Paige), and Posy (Lucy Boynton), are all in their early teens. Unfortunately the professor's money hasn't lasted as well as they have and things, as the British are wont to say, are a bit desperate. In an effort to help make ends meet, Sylvia takes in boarders and it's through one of them that the three girls obtain places in the Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training, run by a refugee from the Russian revolution, Madame Fidolia (Eileen Atikins).
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