Yuli

For some reason, I didn’t like the film as much as I wanted to

There were plenty of good reasons to like it – interesting story (kids makes it from the slums of Havana, surviving the racism that no-one talks about, to become a leading dancer), beautiful scenery (sunny Cuba and damp and miserable London) and lots of dance set pieces that even a philistine like me could appreciate.

But somehow it was all disjointed and never really flowed. First, the fact that it was all in flashback meant that we knew where it would end up, but even accounting for that, everything seemed just so random. He doesn’t want to dance, but he ddances anyway. He takes a week off, has the best time of his life with his mates, then just goes back to the grind. You (or at least I) never really get the sense of any motivation or beliefs.

All the more bizarre that it was written by Paul Laverty who’s done so many great scripts for Ken Loach.

Maybe its just worth going and enjoying the experience without thinking too hard