"LEAP" the Animated Feature of an Aspiring Ballerina with Inspiring Dance Sequences

French directors Eric Summer & Eric Warin have made a charming animated movie due to its creative & credible choreography.  The story itself is flat; two pre-teen friends raised in an orphanage outside France aspire to great heights.  The girl, Felicie (Elle Fanning) wants to be a professional ballerina (despite having any dance training) and the boy, Victor (Nat Wolf) a great inventor.  Both show promising talents while living in a quaint orphanage run by a benevolent nun and cockeyed, hunchback overseer (Mel Brooks).  Felicie & Victor manage a daring escape & hitch a ride into the city of lights. Paris is breathtakingly beautiful but unwelcoming to two ragamuffins.  No surprise that with Felicie's ingenuity, tenacity and unflappability she gains a place in the French Ballet School and the lead role in the Nutcracker Ballet.  The film is set in the late 19th C while both the Eiffel Tower & the Statue of Liberty are under construction.  Both structures are featured in the film.  It's a haven for Victor's apprenticeship and becomes hellish, ridiculous chase scene between Felicie and the mother of her ballerina nemesis, Camille (Maddie Ziegler).  Ziegler is a dancing phenomena who first garnered notice on the TV reality show "Dance Moms".  The too predictable plot pits snobby Camille who was assured of the lead against Felicie.  Felicie finds her footing and the piece de resistance for wanting to dance.  The stereotypical villainous vindictive & wealthy mother is clumsy.  The heartwarming connection between Felicie and the ex-ballerina & impoverished maid to Camille's household is ho-hum.  But, what surpasses the barre is the superlative dance sequences that were made using frame animation on Aurele Dupont & Jeremie Belingard, two principal dancers for the Paris Opera Ballet.  Dupont is the de facto choreographer for the film.  The spectacular dancing is what gives this movie its grand jete' lift.  Kate McKinnon & Mel Brooks add their voices to the assemble'.  The sole pointe for watching this film  pirouettes off the vibrant & professional looking choreography.  Otherwise the movie's story's arch is adagio. Instead, go see the French stop animation film "My Life as a  Zucchini" for the entire family.