Dancing queen

I missed the previews for "Lucky Number Slevin," so I have no update in Josh Hartnett's career. But Yaya* from "America's Next Top Model?" I've seen her first movie and, well, you probably shouldn't.

She plays one of the troubled youth being shaped by Antonio Banderas' dapper ballroom dancing instructor in "Take the Lead." It's "Stand and Deliver" with a Gershwins' soundtrack. It's "Dangerous Minds" with tuxes. You get the idea. It's a true story of a guy in NYC who happens to be able to connect with kids that other people have given up on and helps them in an unconventional manner, by teaching them ballroom dancing. Unfortunately, even if they are based on real kids, these kids seem about as authentic as the Sweathogs. The scripting has more in common with a Jim Belushi sitcom than with its earlier Edward James Olmos and Michelle Pfieffer brethren (not they were "Zero de Conduite," but, hey, "Stand and Deliver" was pretty moving.)

There are two things going for it: First, Antonio Banderas is a Movie Star. They don't give him much, but he manages to be charming and perfectly at ease on screen even doing nothing. Sometimes you see an actor try to crawl off the screen in embarrassment (check out Val Kilmer in "The Island of Dr. Moreau." He spends most of the movie hunched over so you can't see

his face.) Antonio can also cut a rug believably to my untrained-in-the-ways-of-ballroom eyes. Second, I am a sucker for dancing and they do some lovely dancing. I wish there was more, but it was enough to keep me entertained between the awkward dramatic scenes.

And how was Yaya? While she was terrible in her fake commercial for a cosmetics line on "America's Next Top Model," she has vastly improved in her big screen debut. She can move elegantly and when asked to summon some emotional depth, she manages to come up with something to would fly on that mid-70s Gabe Kaplan-John Travolta. Go Yaya!

*For those of you who have some taste and standards, "America's Next Top Model" is a ridiculous series hosted by Tyra Banks that purports to go on a mission to find the world's next Supermodel. All it generates are new girls for Us Weekly to wite about. Yaya came in second one season.