Mad Hot Ballroom is the worst kind of documentary. Whereas the traditional documentary analyzes its subject and presents new ideas in a fresh and interesting way, there is a sort of new, popular documentary. This is called, “put a camera on something interesting for a while, cut up the fun parts, and serve.”

Spellbound appeared to be just such a documentary, but at least it provided some genuinely revealing content about the lengths some children will go, and the lengths their parents will push them, to be successful. Mad Hot Ballroom, a documentary about New York kids in a ballroom dance contest, appears to be the same idea at first, but soon reveals itself as a much thinner production.

There’s really not much more to Ballroom than there is to an episode of “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Ballroom dance is a ten-week class that a lot of kids in New York are taking, and we watch a handful of classes as the kids struggle to learn the moves. We giggle as these little kids take their chore too seriously or not seriously enough, and we think its cute as the little ten year olds work at getting their little moves right as they dance with each other. When they’re not on the floor, we see clips of the boys talking about the girls and the girls talking about the boys and laugh at all the cute things they say. Problem is, it’s really not that cute.

Mad Hot Ballroom has a handful of funny lines and a handful of good moments, but I’ve seen people’s home videos that were more entertaining than this. At the end of the ten-week period, each class gets to enter its best students in the city-wide competition. Mad Hot Ballroom tries to play up the competition, but clearly, the only ones who really care about this contest are the teachers and the documentary makers themselves.

Documentary

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