Unlike the smooth, synchronized image of a couple gliding across a dance floor, "Take the Lead" seems to be on a collision course between fantasy and reality.

		"Take the Lead" Rated: PG-13 for thematic material, language and some violence. Starring: Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown. Director: Liz Friedlander. Related article:Another film puts dance teacher in spotlight Family Film Guide: "Take the Lead" "Take the Lead" Web site

The movie was based on the actual story of teacher Pierre Dulaine, who successfully initiated a ballroom program for fourth- and fifth-grade students in the New York City public schools.

It was the inspiration for last year's glowing documentary "Mad Hot Ballroom," which traced several schools through the training program run by Dulaine's American Ballroom Theater, all the way to the big championship at the World Financial Center in downtown Manhattan. Dulaine was seen in several of the contest scenes.

As if in some strange parallel universe, Hollywood also came knocking at the door, enamored with this feel-good story on a hardwood floor.

But in "Take the Lead," Dulaine turns into Antonio Banderas, whose decidedly French-sounding name is explained away by a Latino mother. The elementary students were replaced by high school teenagers, and the most troubled ones to boot. And the competition finale is an obvious class-conscious confrontation between the rich and the poor.

On second thought, "Take the Lead" seems to be avoiding reality, although not entirely.

Quick cuts between uptown and downtown -- ballroom feet to sneakers, Dulaine's ritzy dance academy to an urban gym -- offer a bracing contrast during the first half of the movie and set a style at the outset.

But as "Take the Lead" starts to focus on this supposedly ragtag group of outcasts -- who surprisingly find their emotional focus in the swirling patterns of dances such as the waltz -- the movie becomes a glitzy take on stereotypes: the overweight student who partners with an aristocratic misfit, the geeky little guy who finds love with his own brand of goddess. There also is a strain of "West Side Story" in the burgeoning relationship between Rock (Rob Brown) and La Rhette (YaYa DaCosta), as we learn that her brother killed his brother.

Amid all of these surging hormones, Banderas forms a calm center. Purposeful, determined, incredibly patient and with an apparent soft spot for the underdog, his Dulaine is always in control. He knows what ballroom can do: teach manners, social graces, even problem-solving.

Banderas shows up lean and mean, in mint dance condition, although sheer attitude and drama play a large part in the sexy tango that so quickly wins over his doubting students. Nonetheless, Banderas' portrayal stays true to the spirit of Dulaine's ballroom quest and keeps the movie on an even keel.

He is supported by the always welcome Alfre Woodard as the resistant principal and a mixed bag of young actors, some of whom obviously had training and others who moved well. They are awkward at times, funny at others. But on the whole, they give the impression that these were students whose previous dance experience came either from the club circuit or the street.

That is, until that fateful competition, where the street dance floods the usually strict atmosphere of the ballroom. In one fast attempt to tie all the strings together, the movie's powers-that-be lurch into a dance-within-a-dance setting. So all of the dramatic vignettes come full circle between dance sets that are entertainingly performed but mostly unbelievable by ballroom standards.

But then, the point all along is that, whatever the outcome, these kids already have won by simply taking to the dance floor. Too bad "Take the Lead" takes so many sidesteps along the way.