Review of Hope Dances

While there's a good story here and my 2.5 year old mostly enjoyed it, the script and some performances really let it down. The cinematography is poor in many scenes, and the editing seems pretty amateur (weird jumps, cuts etc). Overdone makeup in almost every scene, even on the young girls, which is totally going to help with body image issues... (#sarcasm). Inane dialogue and block-ish interactions, her parents are like cardboard. Oh, and you'd better like montages, because this movie is basically just montage after montage, with a little dialogue thrown in because 'I guess we needed some dialogue, right'? Which is exactly how much thought was given to the dialogue and character conversations. Really seems more like a school project than a feature film. Can't say I recommend it, at least some of the dancing was good, which is what my 2.5 year old wanted to see anyway. I mean was there really any suspense about whether she would continue playing softball when the movie is titled "Hope Dances" and the only conflict during the movie when she drops softball is her dad pouting for about 2 scenes? They hired a Playgirl model to be a ballet instructor and hang around all those young women?