Customer Reviews

Madeline: At the Ballet [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Charming Madeline story of the 12 little girls and their adventure dancing with the Paris Ballet. Madeline dreams of being a Prima Ballerina and gets help from an unexpected friend. Delightful!

Madeline is usually a very capable girl, but because she is so small she has a hard time being as good a dancer as her friends. Her class is invited to participate in the Paris ballet production of "The Happy Swan," but her clumsiness causes one disaster after another and almost doesn't get to dance at the primere. She dreams of being a prima ballerina, so the revelation of her inadequacy is discouraging to her. To her credit, she does not give up, and along the way is encouraged by Miss Clavel and an unexpected friend. In the end, even though she isn't perfect, she tries her hardest. My daughter loves the dancing and can relate to Madeline's frustrations of being too small and too clumsy. It's a sweet story that encourages girls to do their best even when disappointed.

The story in the video is nice and should teach perseverance. These are the comments on the reviews. However, my daughter of 3 and half soon realized that Madeline was lucky only because she found the prima ballerina willing to help her to take part into the show, despite Madeline made a lot of mistakes during the selection.
In fact, the story does not hightlight when and how Madeline is working hard in order to catch up with her companions.
Anyway the story is still nice.
Another point I want to make is the resemblance with Dora the Explorer. The differences are about context, but the role of a little girl as heroine is quite similar.
Dora's VHS contains two episodes (half an hour each), Madeline only one (about half an hour).