Billy Elliot: Critic Reviews

Real and consequential.

It demands love, which is the best way not to get it.

There's actually a lot going on in this little movie, and first-time feature director Stephen Daldry ... handles all of it deftly.

The best dance film in ages.

Even if the story is sometimes too sweet to be true, we go out of the theater feeling good.

It's not often that you overhear someone say with real feeling after the credits have rolled: 'That was a wonderful movie.'

An indelible portrait of its time and place. And you can dance to it.

One of those movies where it's impossible not to find yourself cheering for the scruffy underdog hero.

A model of purposefulness; a movie rich, but not lost, in background detail and fair-minded in its account of Thatcherite woes to the working class.

This movie does have a certain undeniable charm.

A surprisingly wise and funny meditation on the nature of what it truly means to be a man.

Not trusting the audience to have any reaction that has not been completely stage-managed, [Hall and Daldry] lay on the sentimentality and the cliches as thick as they can, which is pretty thick.

Terrific story of young ballet dancer has strong language.

The film about atypical artistic pursuits in a blue-collar community that "The Full Monty" sought to be. Peter Darling's choreography dexterously captures the defiance in the dancing - rage against economical and emotional repression in a motherless home.

When sticking with Billy and his inspirational story, director Stephen Daldry hits all the right steps.

Daldry coaches an astonishing performance from Bell.

The story is familiar, to be sure, but director Stephen Daldry and writer Lee Hall tell it so persuasively it's irresistible, and the movie's score of vintage T. Rex classics could do for glam-rock what "The Full Monty" did for disco.

Billy Elliot earns every one of its sentiments and emotions without getting overly manipulative or preachy

A feel-good movie that should have felt even better.

Billy Elliot is charming and entertaining. It's a bit of British fluff, enjoyable and lightweight.

For every boy who played with dolls or performed an activity once thought 'girly;' for every girl who played sports or was considered a 'Tom boy...'

Because the story is so entirely straightforward, the beauty is more in the performances and in the subtle touches than in the journey itself.

Daldry can piece together a competent montage sequence, but he has no idea how to hold your attention without resorting to inspid, watery melodrama.

I always say to people at home with regards to prejudice that the theatre is wonderful, because it embraces everybody.

Billy Elliot es una oda al espiritu humano, asi como un recordatorio divertido y sincero de la importancia de luchar por los suenos