Ballerina - Barney's Incorrect Five Second Reviews

I think the American release of this movie changed the name to "Leap!" but i'm not 100% sure. Anyway, this is a very cute and fun movie about young orphans in France finding and pursuing their dreams. Nothing really new on that front. 

The animation is beautiful but when it gets to the dancing numbers, it seems obvious they didn't use any motion-capture as the movements are heavily robotic and artificial. That's a problem when the movie is about dancing. When they slow it down, it's very graceful, but at normal speed it doesn't look or feel real at all which is a problem. We might be getting a little spoiled with the quality of animation lately. I don't know if you saw the animated short, Piper, but it's hard not to think you're actually watching a little bird in the ocean. Incredible. 

My 6-yr old girl liked this movie well enough so it for sure gets a passing grade and I even had a moment where a tear fell, so kudos to the filmmakers on that one. 

Heart rating: 4 stars

Brain rating: 3 stars