Billy Elliot

It is just brilliant although it isn't very long you just have keep reading you cannot put it down it is just brilliant!

When Billy is explaining what it feels like to dance, he basically summarizes the whole of this screenplay: "...starts out sort of stiff..." but then, he adds, the dance (and story) unfolds and becomes "a fire....electricity." Since I decided that Billy Elliot ranked as one of my favorite movies of 2000, I felt that the book would offer some insight and help to follow the whole of the story (boy those accents are hard to decipher at times in the movie!) This book, in screenplay form, offers all those one liners and dialogue parts you just missed while watching the movie. Pictures from the movie placed throughout the book are a nice added touch. A very satisfying screenplay of a very satisifying movie! It is simply a wonderful tale of getting out of the hard places and truly soaring towards your goals.

Curiously, this version of Billy Elliot (a novelization written by Melvin Burgess) was obviously written to appeal to young adult readers of about jr. high/high school age, who, strangely enough, would not likely be old enough to go see or even really interested in a film such as Billy Elliot in the first place. This novelization unfortunately washes away the directness and vividness so apparent in the written screenplay. The descriptions interspersed within the dialogue take much of the original starkness of the play and movie away, leaving Billy to seem rather flat emotionally. The strife and hardship of Billy's struggle to attain his goals in light of his difficult family situation is largely defused. Lee Hall's excellent screenplay is FAR superior!! Pick that up and by-pass Melvin Burgess's attempt.