★★★
“Nutcrackers Sweet”
To be fair, this was actually announced back in February 2023. Though that was still after Ballerina had wrapped its original shoot. At the time, the title was Ballerina Overdrive, with the cast including Lena Headey, in the role subsequently played by Thurman. Now, it comes out feeling more than a bit as if it is trailing in the wake of Ballerina. Coming out on Amazon Prime rather than theatrically doesn’t help its prestige. While nobody is going to call this great, and it’ll be forgotten as quickly as most other streaming originals, it does at least deliver on the premise. These are actual ass-kicking ballerinas, and their artistic talents are an intrinsic component of their fighting styles.
A Los Angeles ballet troupe of five young dancers, including the working-class Zoe (Apatow) and her appropriately named nemesis, Princess (Condor), are on their way to Budapest for a performance. The bus from the airport breaks down, and they end up in the Teremok Inn, an establishment run by Devora Kasimer (Thurman). When the troupe’s instructor finds out Devora is not exactly just a boutique hotelier, and then spurns the advances of local mobster Pasha Marcovic (Sipos), it does not go well for her. The ballerinas are suddenly witnesses, and therefore very much surplus to requirements. That’s the plot, more or less. Oh, there are slight wrinkles. Devora turns out to be a former ballerina herself. But it’s mostly run, hide and fight.
This is all adequately entertaining nonsense. Disbelief obviously needs to be suspended as you watch 90-pound girls beat up men twice their size. At least there is some effort put in to making them, in the main, use their agility and flexibility, rather brute force. There’s some cool stuff with razor blades, embedded into ballet slippers or taped to fingertips, which works well. Though the sequence I enjoyed most was the one where they went full corps de ballet on Pasha’s men. It’s impossible to take seriously, yet is done with so much inventive energy I was left with a big, goofy grin on my face. Shame there wasn’t more. It’s certainly lighter in tone – and likely more entertaining – than director Jewson’s previous GWG entry, Close, with Noomi Rapace.
I actually grew to like the characters more over the course of proceedings. Admittedly, this is because my initial reaction was… not good. Obvious trope followed obvious trope. But by the end, I had even warmed to the obnoxious Princess. She gets a great moment, confronting one of the henchmen, and going on a rant which begins by complaining about the wifi, drifts through reality TV, and ends up in a sad psychic story. Finally, an amusing anecdote. While we were watching this, Chris pipes up, “You know who’d be good as Devora if they remade this? Uma Thurman.” While I certainly couldn’t argue with her there, I did have to break the news, gently, that it already was Uma Thurman.
Dir: Vicky Jewson
Star: Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, Uma Thurman, Tamás Szabó Sipos