There are without a doubt numerous strikes against the film, like its unexcitedly generic plotline, occasionally awkward skips in time, and a handful of overly dramatic moments. But this is a film not as much about a poor kid growing up in the tumultuous and doomed coalminer strike era in the 1980s, secretly learning the ballet, as it is a film about discovering hope in the most hopeless of situations.

      The story involves the title character Billy Elliot (played by an electrifyingly real Jamie Bell), an energetic and curious young boy growing up as a widowed coal miner's son in Northern England during the infamous coal miner's strike in 1984. Stumbling upon a ballet class during his weekly boxing lesson, he discovers that dancing, despite only being for "puffs", is the one true forum in which he can express all the boxed up emotions he's had to keep within himself for so long. Against his father's wishes, and amid the chaos and violence of the strikes, he trains privately with ballet teacher Mrs. Wilkinson (Julie Walters), who realizes that the brilliant raw talent Billy possesses is perhaps even good enough to get him into the illustrious Royal Ballet School.

      Though it lacks pure slapstick, Billy Elliot is at times both hilarious and touching. And more importantly, it passes my 60% rule. That is, if a film can make me laugh despite only being 60% understandable (yes, it took me 10 minutes to realize his father was actually saying Billy and not belly), it gets the automatic thumbs up. And don't ask me how Billy Elliot became the tamest R-rated film I've ever seen. The fact that the MPAA was able to hear curse words amid the heavy english dialect is in and of itself an impressive task.

      There isn't much subtlety in the delivery first-time director Stephen Daldry gives his film. It is perhaps honesty in its purest form. And come to think of it, that may be Billy Elliot the film and Billy Elliot the character's best mistake.

Stephen Wong, ????