Hula Girls

Starring: Yasuko Matsuyuki, Yu Aoi, Etsushi Toyokawa

Director: Lee Sang-il

Category: IIA (Japanese)

Teary goodbyes between friends followed by joyous reconciliation between antagonists; underdogs emerging triumphant after a series of heartbreaking setbacks; and to top it off, a grand all-singing, all-dancing finale. As feel-good summer movies go, Hula Girls has everything - and more, given the raucous hula dance sequences that are as dazzling and well-choreographed as anything of its kind that has ever appeared on film.

Casting aside his penchant for showcasing troubled adolescence (69 in 2003, Scrap Heaven in 2004), Japanese filmmaker Lee Sang-il's move into lighter, family-friendly territory is safe melodrama: an adaptation of the story of a Japanese choreographer's successful attempts in transforming women in a mining town into brilliant dancers.

Hula Girls has at its centre disillusioned ore-dressers (they take care of the coal after it's mined) looking for financial and spiritual renewal amid the decline in demand for coal in mid-1960s Japan.

Those taking the plunge are young women trying to escape from life at the mine in Iwaki. They train as hula dancers for a new Hawaiian-themed tourist centre - much to the chagrin of the town's men as the institution is going to be Iwaki's source of revenue when the town's coal mine meets its inevitable end.

It's hard to fault Hula Girls as Lee injects the film with efficient visual imagery - such as the contrast between the harshness of the dusty town and its folk, and the warm colours inside the dancers' rehearsal room and while they're on tour around the country - and conjures competent performances all round, from Yasuko Matsuyuki's washed-up choreographer who finds a new goal in life in Iwaki, and Yu Aoi's (above) teenager, who's determined to defy her family by becoming a top performer.

Slick production values and female emancipation aside, the film has a slightly problematic premise when put in the context of film-making as cultural practice. The thinly veiled leitmotif is about how

the protagonists' well-being can only come about through the embrace of a western-style modernity shaped by the pressures of globalisation; that traditional values - here, equated simply with patriarchy - is a hindrance.

And this can be an apt metaphor in looking at Hula Girls' blemish: by tracking too close to sappy vehicles from beyond its shores - The Full Monty and Calendar Girls come to mind - it becomes entrenched in western-style sentimentality. And such a lack of perspective in how cultural issues will play out undermines an otherwise entertaining film.

Hula Girls opens today