Leap! (PG)
Caramel Films; Gaumont (France) (USA); IMDb; L'Atelier Animation; Lionsgate; official website (France); Quad Cinema; Rotten Tomatoes (Ballerina) (Leap!); TV Tropes; Wikia; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Vudu; YouTube

Caution: spoilers.

This is a French and Canadian co-production, with the original title "Ballerina." It was released in France and the UK in late 2016, and in Canada in early 2017. Later in 2017 it was released in the U.S., where it was renamed "Leap!" (presumably for ridiculous patriarchal reasons).

The movie is set in the 1880s (you can tell because the Eiffel Tower is under construction... as is the Statue of Liberty, but that's kind of getting real history a bit mixed up). It starts in an orphanage in Brittany, France, where we meet two best friends, Félicie (Elle Fanning) and Victor. The two of them have apparently tried to escape together many times, but are always caught by the orphanage's supervisor, M. Luteau (Mel Brooks). One day they finally do manage to elude him, and hop a train to Paris. Unfortunately, the two children are soon separated. Félicie makes her way to a ballet school she'd seen on a post card Victor had found somewhere, because she has always wanted to be a dancer. (Actually, it's the Paris Opera Ballet, which I guess includes a school, as well as being a theater.) She wanders into the building at night (I have no idea why it was unlocked), where she sees a ballerina named Rosita practicing. But before long, she's caught by a janitor, who accuses of her of being a thief. But she's rescued by a cleaner named Odette (Carly Rae Jepsen). Félicie follows Odette home, though the latter wants to be left alone, at first. She lives in servant quarters in the house of a very mean, wealthy restaurateur named Régine Le Haut (Kate McKinnon). Félicie wins Odette over by helping her with her duties cleaning Le Haut's house, and eventually agrees to let Félicie stay with her. Soon, Félicie meets Le Haut's daughter, Camille (Maddie Ziegler), who has been training for years to become a ballerina. Camille seems to be just as mean as her mother, stealing Félicie's music box (the only thing she has left from her own mother), and throwing it out the window to be smashed on the pavement below. So, when a letter later arrives for Camille, granting her admission to the prestigious ballet school, Félicie steals the letter before anyone else sees it, goes to the school, and passes herself off as Camille.

Félicie later meets up with Victor again, who tells her of his own adventures since they were separated. He'd made a new friend named Matty, who works for Gustave Eiffel. Victor also gets a job working for Eiffel, and he tells Félicie that he's the engineer's "ideas man," though in fact he's just a cleaner. (Victor has always wanted to be an inventor, and he had designed a sort of glider that he and Félicie used to escape from the orphanage. Now he's designing an improved version, which will come in handy later in the movie.) Anyway, Félicie returns to the ballet class, which is taught by a famous dancer named Louis Mérante. He intends to expel one student after every lesson, and expects Félicie (or rather, Camille) to be the first to go. Even before he saw her dance, he didn't think "Camille" deserved to be there, having only gained admission as a favor to her mother by a member of the opera who enjoys Le Haut's restaurant. And it does seem that Félicie isn't very good at ballet. (From the very first scene in the orphanage, we learned that she has good moves, and might be a natural at some other type of dancing, but she doesn't know the first thing about how ballerinas dance.) However, she does get lucky, and another girl does worse than her. (We don't really get to know many of the girls at the school, though Félicie is befriended two students named Dora and Nora.) And after awhile, Odette starts giving Félicie private lessons, at home. She had been a great ballerina, herself, before an injury left her with a limp that ended her career. So, with her help, Félicie quickly improves, and avoids being eliminated by Mérante. Also, there is a Russian boy named Rudolph, who is apparently the star student of the boys' ballet class (though he's the only male student we see in the movie). It seems like all the girls have crushes on him, but he quickly takes a liking to Félicie... which makes Victor jealous.

Well, one of the girls in Mérante's class is going to be picked to dance with Rosita in "The Nutcracker," and it seems it will be Félicie. Unfortunately, it's finally discovered that she had stolen Camille's identity. And... I guess I don't want to reveal any more of what happens. But it does have a happy ending, after some disappointment and some craziness. I will say that at the start of the movie, I was a little bit underwhelmed, at least by some of the dialog. (I wondered if I might like it better if I watched it in French, with subtitles. Maybe I'll try that someday.) But as the movie went on, I thought it got increasingly better. It never quite manages to be great, but I definitely thought it was fun. Oh, and I did like the part where Odette told Félicie, basically, that there was no way she could be better than Camille in a technical performance, given all the years and work Camille had put in. But that she could win if she used her passion for dance, which Camille lacked. (I mean, there are so many movies where someone who has just started training at whatever it is they want to do doesn't take long to become better than someone who's been training for a long time, and it's pretty unrealistic. This movie doesn't really avert that trope, but I liked that it was at least addressed, instead of just completely ignored.)