What Do The Critics Say?

"There's dancing, there's emotion, there's an earnestly cheesy inspirational storyline, there's nothing you won't have seen before. Wanstead, who trained as a dancer and knows how to fling her long limbs around, is likeable as the lead, balancing a performance that demands busting moves and tugging heartstrings in equal measure." Daniel Etherington CHANNEL 4 FILM "It’s all just filler between the dance scenes, which are admittedly fun. Think Pussycat Dolls with slightly more clothes on. Unrepentantly formulaic, but enjoyable all the same." Ellen E Jones TOTAL FILM "If you think you've had enough of dance films, you might want to have another look: this one is worth finding a place for. The story may be predictable but Winstead infuses every moment with an amazing amount of charm. The music is terrific and the photography brings the best out of a stunning-looking Chicago." Victor Olliver TELETEXT "In short, this is a watchable dance movie and Winstead's performance just about compensates for the generally poor direction. Her dance moves aren't bad either, although they're a far cry from the likes of Step Up." Matthew Turner VIEW LONDON "Despite boundless energy and some surprisingly artful photography, "Make it Happen" is never more than product. "Make it Happen" follows the fortunes of budding dancer Lauryn as she pursues her lifelong dream to: well, you know the rest." Darren Grant TIME OUT LONDON

"Make It Happen is co-written by Duane Adler, a man with six writing credits to his name. And every single one of those credits is for a film about dancing. There is nothing inherently wrong with films following a formula; but following them to the letter is just too much. In fact, it is only because of Winstead that the film doesn't grind to an unbearable halt. She has a natural honesty and likeability about her that makes Lauryn very easy to support and admire.If a predictable story and lots of dancing is all you look for in a film, you'll have an utterly fantastic time." David Mercier FILMJUDGE "Showgirls minus the nudity, as Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s wholesome small-town girl heads to Chicago to audition for a dance academy, only to end up writhing on stage at the world’s chastest burlesque bar, raising the hackles of the twirler she’s supplanted." Nick de Semlyen EMPIRE MAGAZINE (UK) "The film should have been called Rehash Dance, because it is Flashdance without any new ideas. At the very least you would expect one inventive routine from a story about a would-be dancer, but the choreographers couldn’t even manage that. Twirling umbrellas, tipping top hats and Bucks Fizz style disappearing skirts are all trotted out by Mary Elizabeth Winstead as small-town Lauryn, who wants to make it big." THE SUN (UK) "Like the fifty other teen dance films that came before it, director Billie Woodruff’s Make it Happen follows a well-worn formula: a formula that desperately needs a good kick in the touché. There definitely is an audience for this film; just as there was an audience for "Honey", "Step Up", "Save the Last Dance", "How she Move" and "Step Up 2 : The Streets". surely even they, the fourteen year old girls, must be getting a little tired of watching the same old thing, right?" Clint Morris MOVIEHOLE

The Inside Story One day while driving down Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, film producer Anthony Mosawi got an idea. For the previous eighteen months he had 'marinated' himself in horror, reading some six hundred scripts and watching countless horror movies. But that day in the car, it struck him. The founder and chief executive of Mayhem Entertainment, who by the way, happens to be a qualified UK barrister and California attorney, wanted to make a movie about dancing. "I was getting so sick of horror. At that moment I thought, the dance film, there weren’t a lot of dance films in the market then. It just felt like something that was fresh for a different demographic," Mosawi recalls. The film tells the story of Lauryn, a young woman from a small town who moves to Chicago with dreams of entering the Chicago School of Music and Dance. But after rejection and a series of misfortunes she finds herself working in a burlesque club. The club proves to be a place of conflict and self-discovery, helping Lauryn to realize that even though plans may change, dreams never do. It’s the kind of theme that Mosawi envisioned before the story even took shape. "With everything from the political climate to the economic climate, I think the idea of someone having dreams and going for them just felt like the right time for it. We had to think about it and ask 'what really could we deliver which in the dance landscape hasn’t been seen before?' And we thought something which could really capture dance from the people who go and see Chicago and Moulin Rouge, to the people who would go and see Step Up as well. And then it’s got to be about a particular sort of dance, and burlesque is something which has really grown." Burlesque is a form of theatre whose roots rocked American pop culture from the get-go. The mention of burlesque often conjures up images of bawdy striptease artists bumping and grinding in pointed pasties and skimpy g-strings, although this image has changed in recent decades. Burlesque originated in the 1860's with an audacious British showgirl named Lydia Thompson and her all-female cast of bleach blondes performing parodies of Greek tragedies. British burlesque relied on the display of shapely, underdressed women to keep audiences interested. These shows used comedy and music to challenge the established way of looking at things. In the Victorian age, when proper women went to great lengths to hide their physical form beneath bustles, hoops and frills, the idea of young ladies appearing onstage in tights was a powerful challenge. Although many dismissed burlesque as the tail-end of show business, its influence reaches through the development of popular entertainment into the present. "What we’re doing is timeless. So even when the burlesque trend may play itself out, we still think there’s something here that appeals to the audience because the dance itself is very classy," Mosawi attests. With the idea to make a dance film firmly in place, Mosawi and producing partner Brad Luff ("Not Another Teen Movie") set out to develop the story in-house. "Usually what happens is a writer comes to you, they’ll pitch you the idea or they’ve already written the script and they send it to you; and if you like it, you buy it and develop it with them and make it into a film. This one was our own idea. We grew it, and then we spoke to Dwayne Adler, who is the man who has written pretty much most of the largest grossing dance movies of the last ten years," Mosawi explained. "I’ve known Dwayne for about eleven or twelve years," Luff said. "I’ve read his writing before he wrote "Save The Last Dance" and been a fan of his. When Anthony approached me about doing a dance movie, I said I know the perfect writer. Dwayne had just written another dance movie that was very successful, and I felt he would understand this world and these characters. We wanted to work with somebody who could help take our ideas and bring their own ideas to it as well." Someone else integral to bringing ideas is the film’s director. To undertake this creative task, Luff and Mosawi chose 2005 BET Comedy Award wiiner Darren Grant ("Diary of a Mad Black Woman"), a director from a different place: the world of video. "Darren’s background is music videos; he’s done one hundred and thirty music videos. What he does differently from what a lot of the music videos are doing is that he focuses on women very well, he lights them beautifully. What we saw in every one of his music videos was they all had a narrative in them, so even though they were obviously trying to match lyrics and trying to match the storylines of the actors, they still had a unique story in every single one," Mosawi notes. Director Darren Grant, whose first feature "Diary of a Mad Black Woman" garnered much industry acclaim and box office success, explained why he wanted to make the movie. "What attracted me to "Make It Happen" was the fact that I could really just incorporate a lot of styles that I had done over the years. I’ve done one movie, I’ve done a bunch of music videos, and this was kind of a combination of both because you have the dance element, and each little dance routine was going to be like its own little music video." Something the 'kids' will be able to relate to is the performance element. Set in the world of burlesque flavored with modern cabaret, the film features a blend of music and dance that can only be described with a brand new word coined by Grant. "My take on the movie is that I felt it should be less burlesque, traditional burlesque, and more of something as like a modern version of cabaret. We’re gonna do a little bit of theatricality, and kind of combine it, and it becomes this kind of caber-esque thing, you know. Whatever you want to call it. Caber-esque?" When it came to helping the Director to tell the story, Grant went with a sure thing, choosing to work with long time collaborator, 1999 Kodak Cinematography Award winner David Claessen ("Every Dog Has Its Day"). "I’ve worked with David since I was a PA and an electrician, and I always liked the way he lights. In film school they talked a lot about the Dutch masters and David is Dutch, he’s from Amsterdam, so he really can paint with light. I’ve loved that. We’ve done music videos that have been amazing and every frame is like a portrait or a picture," Grant recalls. Producer Anthony Mosawi had a different take on why they chose Claessen as DOP. "David is Dutch, and we were looking for Dutch men basically. So that was it. What’s the next question?", he joked. It was a different story when it came time to bring on a Production Designer on-board. While there were many impressive ones out there, to Grant, none of them seemed the right fit. After meering ten PD's he remembers remarking: "man, you know, there’s some good ones, but I don’t know if they have the vision. We’re trying to create something that hasn’t been seen in a while. Who’s really gonna push the envelope?" The answer to that question was Ray Kluga, a production designer based in New York. "The guy sold me on the phone. He’s just so calming, reassuring, has great ideas and his vision for the project, he just took it somewhere that I never even imagined", Grant said. Kluga began his career as an Art Director where he quickly moved to the top of the field, working with such Directors as Martin Brest ("Scent of a Woman"), Woody Allen ("Bullets Over Broadway"), Robert Redford ("The Horse Whisperer"), Adrian Lyne (Lolita"), Cameron Crowe ("Vanilla Sky"), Nora Ephron ("You've Got Mail") and Garry Marshall ("Nine Months"). His Production Design debut would come thanks to the Donald Petrie's film "Just My Luck" starring Lindsay Lohan. "His initial idea, just over the phone, it blew me away. So when he came to LA, we met, and I was like, absolutely, you have to hire this guy," says Grant. Ray Kluga had a definite vision, and succeeded at creating an authentic and believable world for the film. He describes the feel he was going for: "It’s a gritty place, with this bohemian life, with this bar that we’re creating." For "Make It Happen", the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada, would double as Chicago. Ruby's is actually the Empire Cabaret located in the hub of the Exchange District. The turn of the century Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been transformed into one of Winnipeg's hottest night clubs. "We chose the Empire Cabaret here in Winnipeg because it just lent theatricality to the movie. We wanted the dance numbers to feel much more theatrical and not just like they could be performed at any club or bar." While all looks glitzy and glamorous in the film, the Empire Caberat has a chequered history. The Empire, which first opened in 2001 in an extensively renovated former bank near the corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street, closed in November 2007 after the death of Jeff Engen, 24. The month prior, three men and a woman were injured when a twenty two year old man, allegedly opened fire in the club. The heart of the film is dance, and great dancing takes great choreography. Tracy Phillips and Dominic Carbone started choreographing together in high school and have been turning heads together ever since. "There’s a very well known group of clubs called the Forty Deuce Clubs. Tracy Phillips (the belly dancer in "Charlie Wilson's War") was one of the first burlesque dancers at that club, but left there about two years ago and started her own club called Aqua. So we went there and we saw her show, and it was fantastic," says Producer Anthony Mosawi. Phillips describes the dance in the film as "sexy and powerful, it puts the women in a position of power as opposed to being just objectified. I think it’s classic and fresh at the same time, you know, old and new." Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who played Lee in Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" was cast in the lead role of Lauryn. "She’s beautiful, she’s cute, she’s sexy, she can play a tomboy. And she can dance. She has years and years of dance experience, which was obviously an asset because you can’t fake that. And so she does a lot of her own dancing in this," Grant enthused. Winstead, who started dancing at the age of four, was thrilled and a little shocked to be offered the role of Lauryn "I actually got offered the role kind of out of the blue. And I was extremely excited because it’s a dance film and dance has been a passion of mine for a long time, especially growing up, so it was just a really great opportunity." And working with Phillips and Carbone? "It was really tough the preparation. They kind of threw me into it immediately, ten hour day rehearsals. In the first couple of days I really thought I was gonna die. I just thought they were going to kill me. They didn’t cut me any slack, they just taught me. The first couple of weeks, once I made it through that, then I was like, okay, I think I’ll live, I think I’ll make it. But it was tough, it was really tough." Synopsis

After the untimely death of both parents, Lauryn puts her aspirations on hold to work as a bookkeeper, helping brother Joel keep the family’s auto shop open. All the while she practices at sunrise in a homemade studio, preparing for an audition at the Chicago School of Music & Dance. Finally, the long anticipated day arrives, Lauryn’s shot to show what she’s got and gain acceptance into the prestigious program. But when her routine fails to impress, she leaves the audition dejected, her spirit as shattered as her dreams. Unable to return home and face Joel, Lauryn encounters a new friend who offers up a place to stay. Also a dancer, Dana helps Lauryn get a job bookkeeping at Ruby’s, a local burlesque club. Ruby’s 'girls' dance the length of the bar like a catwalk, performing flashy choreography for the captivated crowd. On the surface Lauryn is content working in the office, but for how long?

The Verdict "It's a story most of us have heard of, or have already seen on the big-screen. You know the one. Small town mid-west girl; loses parents in tragic accident; forced to put her dreams on hold to keep either the family together or, in this case, the families auto-repair business afloat; gets an audition for a scholarship at 'the' most prestigious of school of arts where she is up against a mass of hopefuls all competing for limited placements. We all know how it ends, don't we? There's been an long list of 'inspirational girl makes good through dance' stories beginning with the iconic "Fame" (1980) and "Flashdance (1983) to a barrage of films in this decade including: "Center Stage" (2000), "Save The Last Dance" (2001), "Honey" (2003), "Step Up" (2006) and "Step Up 2 the Streets" (2008). Each of these films had a story to tell, but all had a familiarity about them. "Make It Happen" at least deviates from a path well worn by many we've seen lately. In this tale, hopeful dancer Lauryn (as we discover early in the film), doesn't have the 'moves' to impress the Chicago School of Music & Dance. But, as fate would have it, she finds her way to a bookkeeping job, something she does have the 'right moves' for, at a high class Burlesque club named Ruby's. Here the classy entertainers are attractive, lithe, longlegged and can dance. Leading lady Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who was a standout in "Deathproof") shines in the role of Lauryn. She has the look, the class and the dance skills needed to pull off this role. Sure the storyline is a little predictable, and yes, the dialogue is a little ordinary, but what "Make It Happens" lacks in those departments, it more than compensates for, when it comes to the colorful Burlesque dance sequences. Another plus for "Make It Happens" is that it is virtuality squeeky clean and non-offensive. Teen girls and young women should find "Make It Happens" reasonably entertaining. 3 1/2 STARS." Crew Bytes "MAKE IT HAPPEN" was .......
directed by Darren Grant ["Diary of a Mad Black Woman]; story by Duane Adler ["Save the Last Dance", "The Way She Moves" and "Step Up 2: The Streets"] and Nicole Avril ["Hollywood Wives: The New Generation"]; art direction by Réjean Labrie ["Hands Of Ida", "The Clown at Midnight" and "Full of It"]; set decoration by Stephen Arndt ["Running with the Hitman", "Full of It" and "The Lookout"]; production design by Ray Kluga ["Just My Luck", "Save Me" and "The Babysitters"]; edited by Scott Richter ["Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights", "See No evil" and "Rogue Assassin"]; director of photography by David Claessen ["Every Dog Has Its Day", "Laughing Out Loud" and "Diary of a Mad Black Woman"]; original music by Paul Haslinger ["Blue Crush", "Crank", "Prom Night" and "Death Race"]. Who's Who

Mary Elizabeth Winstead Julissa Bermudez Leigh Enns Erik Fjeldsted Matt Kippen Karen LeBlanc Aaron Merke Terry Ray John Reardon Ashley Roberts Riley Smith Tessa Thompson

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Lauryn Carmen Flirtatious customer Marty Wayne Brenda Clay Birthday Boy Joel Brooke Russ Dana

Run Time 90 minutes Rated PG [AUST] Copyright ©2008 - Roadshow Films - All Rights Reserved ©2008 All Rights Reserved The Movie Pages - Protected by Australian, International, Copyright & Trademark Laws.