Mad Hot Ballroom

Shamelessly entertaining, this documentary about kids competing is not as deep or as well-constructed as Spellbound, but does borrow from its subject an irrepressible energy and charm. Fifth-graders in NYC are required to take a ten-week course in ballroom dancing (now that right there would have forced me to drop out of school and run away from home), with citywide competitions at the end. We start with schools in Brooklyn, Tribeca, and Washington Heights, which are gradually winnowed away by the contests and the film itself. Many intriguing characters are glimpsed, but no more, though by the championships we know our favorites pretty well, at least by name and style of hip-shaking. Much of the film’s humor and warmth comes from the premise of pre- or incipiently-sexual children doing flagrantly-sexual dances such as the rhumba, merengue, and swing, all very proper and polite you understand. One very knowing little girl, Jodie Foster precocious, explains seriously that 11-year-old girls are the object most desired by perverts. So I have to be careful what I say, but these kids, girls and boys both, are damn cute. Director Marilyn Argelo puts many appealing elements together, mixing music and gym class, etiquette and enticement, so it hardly matters that the film just skims the surface, when it does it so dancingly. (2005, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-71, RT-82.)