Product Description

From Baz Lurhrmann -- the director of the award-winning hits ROMEO & JULIET and MOULIN ROUGE! -- comes STRICTLY BALLROOM ... the hilariously funny romantic comedy that's sure to leave you laughing, cheering, and feeling great! It's the magical story of a championship ballroom dancer who's breaking all the rules, and his ugly duckling dancing partner. Together they make their dreams come true! Now celebrating its glorious 10th Anniversary -- you're sure to enjoy this exhaustively funny comedy as it dances and soars its way straight into your heart. Critics everywhere fell madly in love with this big-screen treat -- and so will you!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25191 in DVD
• Brand: BUENA VISTA HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2002-03-19
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.com
While the plot of this Australian film may seem a bit familiar (The Ugly Duckling meets Dirty Dancing), the whimsical tone and superb dance sequences will make you forget the movie's predictability. Scott (Paul Mercurio) is a champion ballroom dancer who wants to dance "his own steps." Fran is the homely, beginning dancer who convinces Scott that he should dance his own steps... with her. Complicating matters are Scott's domineering mother (Pat Thompson), a former dancer herself, who wants her son to win the Australian Pan Pacific Championship (the same contest she lost years ago), and a conniving dance committee that is determined that "there are no new steps!" The dancing is enjoyable, yet not overwhelming, and the movie strives hard not to take itself too seriously (the beginning of the film is even styled as a pseudo-documentary). Strictly Ballroom, while not so subtly imparting its moral ("A life lived in fear is a life half-lived"), is a laughable romp that's sure to be a crowd pleaser. --Jenny Brown

DVD features
The 10th-anniversary DVD of Baz Luhrmann's Strictly Ballroom does everything it can to associate itself with the director's 2001 musical Moulin Rouge, from its cover art to its red-curtain animated menus. The commentary track, by Luhrmann, Catherine Martin (Luhrmann's wife and the Oscar(r)-winning production designer for Moulin Rouge), and choreographer John "Cha Cha" O'Connell, is rather broad, often covering general points about the movie or about Moulin Rouge instead of the specific scene that is playing. Trivia tidbits include the decision to cast actors rather than dancers (Paul Mercurio being a notable exception) and how the health department tried to shut down the film. The DVD also includes Maria Stratford's 1986 documentary "From Samba to Slow Fox," a 30-minute examination of the Australian ballroom-dancing scene (mirrored in Strictly Ballroom's faux-documentary opening), and five short Luhrmann-narrated featurettes, the most interesting of which present backstage photos and international promotional art. --David Horiuchi

From The New Yorker
Baz Luhrmann's first film brings good news: Australian cinema is on the move again, with a vigor not seen since the days of "Mad Max." There's no violence in "Strictly Ballroom"-the general lack of unpleasantness, in fact, is quite unnerving-but the speed of it still leaves you reeling. A young dancer, played by Paul Mercurio, acquires a new partner (Tara Morice), dreams up a flash routine, and sets out to break the Old Guard. The plot is cut-rate melodrama, and Luhrmann knows it; but he never sneers at his hero's ambitions. Besides, there are so many other things to laugh at-the costumes, the minor characters with their major obsessions, the psychedelic makeup, the trashy music. The movie is over before you know it, and is not one to linger in the mind, or indeed pass through the mind at all; but it's a good-humored ride for the senses, never too sickly, and who can say no to that? -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker