Movie  2006
 Take the Lead      Back      Home
LaRhette: You think you one of us now?
Caitlin: No.
[from trailer]
Pierre Dulaine: What I teach has value.
Ramos: Not where I live.
Pierre Dulaine: I understand six languages and I speak five - all with a Spanish accent
Caitlin: I'd kill to dance like that. It's like sex on hardwood.
Rock: Doctor's note. I can't dance, I have a heart condition.
Pierre Dulaine: Interesting man, your doctor. Not many doctors write notes on three-hole paper.
[from trailer]
Pierre Dulaine: You can get what you want.
Rock: No, some people get what they want.
Pierre Dulaine: Those are the people who show up to get it.
Kurd: Why you gotta be such a ballroom weirdo?
Pierre Dulaine: What if I said these dances would make you look cool?
Rock: I'd say you're full of shit.
Eddie: Man, punk moves like that won't get you no play around here, trust me I've tried it.
Principal Augustine James: [on the phone about her car] I don't want it pimped I want it fixed!
Principal: For these kids life is a fight to stay alive, and a hustle to make ends meet.
Caitlin: Mr.Dulaine? Morgan says the kids you teach up town are a bunch of no-talent losers.
Pierre Dulaine: You cannot always believe what Morgan says.
Caitlin: I would really like to join them.
Eddie: Check Mr Dulaine! He's just gettin' his flirt on.
Caitlin: Look, I want to be here. Not because I'm
[awkwardly]
Caitlin: "slumming it", but because I feel better here.
Ramos: Dance to this.
Ramos: Who died?
Pierre Dulaine: Apparently your manners...
Pierre Dulaine: I want to teach your kids to dance.
Principal Augustine James: If theres' one thing they can do, it's dance.
Pierre Dulaine: Ballroom dance? Waltz, the foxtrot?
Principal Augustine James: Ok, where's the camera? Because if you're saying that you want to teach my kids the foxtrot I have to be on TV.
Sasha: Look we don't need your charity or anything.
Pierre Dulaine: Thank you.
LaRhette: Uh-huh.
Pierre Dulaine: I believe the appropiate response is "you're welcome"
LaRhette: Uh-huh.
Sasha: I've never seen anyone move like that before.
Morgan: I'm sure.
Pierre Dulaine: Do you love to dance?
Caitlin: Yeah
Pierre Dulaine: Then your meant to dance.
Ramos: I'm so fly I can make anyone look good.
Rock: No one does somethin' for nothin'.
Principal Augustine James: You know who did that to my car, don't you?
Pierre Dulaine: He may have been black, or hispanic.
Principal Augustine James: ...Let me know if you remember...
Description
Inspired by a true story, Antonio Banderas stars as internationally acclaimed ballroom dancer Pierre Dulane in the energetic and moving film Take The Lead. When Dulane volunteers to teach dance in the New York public school system, his background first clashes with his students' tastes...but together they create a completely new style of dance.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Music Clips



Amazon.com
The sensuous thrill of ballroom dancing collides with the hip-hop world of self-expression in Take the Lead. Antonio Banderas (Desperado, The Mask of Zorro) stars as Pierre Dulaine, a dance teacher who--perhaps to fill a void in his own life--decides to teach the foxtrot and the tango to a group of inner-city high school students who've been put in detention. The kids sullenly resist this intruder with his silly box-steps, but gradually succumb to the allure of passion channeled into physical grace. It's a lot of hooey, of course--the stories about the individual kids are shallow melodrama--but a movie like this isn't so much about plot as about dancing, and the dancing bewitches. The main problem of Take the Lead is that there isn't enough dancing; at least half of the personal struggle of the students could be jettisoned and happily be replaced by fifteen minutes of a sleek and sexy rhumba. Still, Banderas has a warm, ingratiating presence and can spout platitudes about dance with conviction; Alfre Woodard (Crooklyn, Desperate Housewives) has her usual charismatic authority as the school's hard-nosed principal; and the dance competition at the movie's end gives the movie the lift it's wanted for the previous hour and a half. --Bret Fetzer