Leap! (Ballerina)

Even if it never quite takes the risks implied by its exclamatory title ... "Leap!" follows the established steps with general grace and good humor.

At one point, Félicie's ballet teacher tells her that she has "the energy of a bullet" but no technique or focus; the same is true of Ballerina itself.

There's plenty of visual whimsy in the late-19th-century setting - the animators render a gorgeous Paris - while enthusiastic dance sequences and comic beats balance out melodrama.

[Ballerina offers] some interesting and thoroughly entertaining observations about what it takes to achieve your dreams.

With its over-familiar story and missed opportunities -- it settles for cute when it could be charming -- Ballerina is too clunky and unco-ordinated to be a classic, but young dance fans may still be inspired.

Perfectly animated leaps and bounds can only provide so much distraction.

The ballet sequences remain curiously earthbound in an animated film untethered from physical reality that can't compete with the dazzling, gravity-defying dance-offs of live-action fare like the Step Up movies.

Ballerina would be just another predictable, rags-to-riches, girl-follows-her-dreams movie if it weren't for one big factor: it's set in fin-de-siècle Paris.

The film, although is full of common places, has its greater interest in the recreation of that Paris and in some choreographies that only the drawing makes possible. [Full review in Spanish]

A film that ranks among the best of recent animated cinema because the show of interiors and the urban landscape is as brilliant as it is trustworthy. [Full review in Spanish]

The profound weaknesses of the film are manifested in the characters movements that don't evoke the grace of classical dance and, on the other hand, evidence the limitations of its digital animation. [Full review in Spanish]

Even though it seeks to fit in trying to look like an American animation, its scent of illustrated European children's story is perceived. [Full review in Spanish]