Excellent adaptation.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Li Cunxin is a Chinese ballet dancer. He arrives in America in a cultural exchange program sponsored by the Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood). As a child, he was taken from a small rural village and trained in the state dance program in Beijing. He tries to adjust to the new culture and the new dance program. He falls for fellow dancer Elizabeth (Amanda Schull). Li wants to extend his stay but the Chinese government refuses.There is a general lack of drama in this biopic. His childhood story is interesting but without any surprises. It's interesting to see China but the story has no intensity. A similar thing can be said about the modern American side of the story. At least that has a love story and some drama about his defection. Two hours is way too long for a biopic that isn't that dramatic.

is heart of this film. a film full of Manicheic shadows, touching, cruel, with few drops of melodrama, but precise work. because, far from image of a China from many others, far from a nice adaptation of a novel, it is a profound story of a man with ordinary ambitions. axis of his desires - be yourself. and the courage of the young man is root for an entire universe. result - touching fairy - tale, beautiful ballet scenes, good performance, and universal image of making happiness. an universal case of every "ballerino" beyond Iron Curtain who choose freedom. its virtue - science to respect measure ( the Chinese shadows are only instrument for powerful effect ) and to create not exactly a film but image of a painful testimony. and this is appreciated.

I should have trusted my instinct and avoided this movie based on the title. I pictured some sort of feel good propaganda capable of passing Chinese censorship.Li Cunxin a Chinese ballet dancer catches the eye of Ben Stevenson the Houston ballet director who is touring China in the 1970s. Ben brings him to the US as a student and makes him a star. Li marries and defects. In the end he is reunited with his family and makes a glorious visit to his homeland with his second wife. In the final scene he and his wife (also a ballet dancer) freeze in the cliché triumphant glory pose (arms together pointing to infinity) of Chinese opera. It is sickening.Another reviewer said this was paint by numbers for the masses-- Basically accurate. It made millions at the box office. Every cliché known to the genre is in this thing....the sudden need to replace the lead dancer hours before curtain call. The wise sage teacher who supplies the magic anecdotal encouragement to motivate a discouraged student. This is an autobiography--where are the negatives that would make this guy human? The excessive ambition maybe a few dirty tricks he regrets--none of that.I personally hate movies that throw up signs on how the viewer is supposed to feel and think every 10 seconds.The acting directing and story is cheesy (overdone inauthentic exaggerated) Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood) gets an F for unconvincing gay mannerisms he should have studied Paul Lynn. One flaw of Netflix Streaming is you cannot fast forward...however with about an hour to go I began to skip ahead 5 minutes at a time-- it is that bad.DO NOT RECOMMEND

"Mao's Last Dancer" is a very enjoyable and inspiring film--even if, like me, you have absolutely no interest in ballet. The film is based on the autobiography of Li Cunxin--a great Chinese dancer who eventually defected to the United States in the early 1980s.The film bounces back and forth in time, but basically it begins with a young boy being chosen to move from his very rural town to Beijing to begin training as a dancer. I thought the most interesting part of the film was his training as well as the struggle between those wanting to create true ballet in China and those who wanted it to be used for propaganda purposes. Regardless, eventually Cunxin (Chi Cao) is given an opportunity to dance in the US by the leader of a ballet troop in Houston (Bruce Greenwood) and the rest is history. See it for yourself to find out what happens next.As I said above, it's a very good film even though many in the audience will not care for ballet. Let's be honest here--ballet is not appreciated by a wide audience. But what I could appreciate was Cao's great athleticism and very good acting. I also enjoyed watching Greenwood, as he was quite different from the more macho and deep-voiced guy I saw in the TV show "Nowhere Man". Here, he sounds like an entirely different guy and I appreciated that as well. The film also is quite artistic--with lovely music and direction. Well worth seeing.