A documentary directed by Marilyn Agrelo. Rating unavailable. Opens Friday, May 27, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Mad Hot Ballroom is a lot more fun than Spellbound, and not just because there are bigger laughs to be had watching kids try to swivel their hips to the merengue than listening to them try to sound out Darjeeling. Both hit documentaries centre on 10- or 11-year-olds engaging in the kind of high-anxiety competition that makes movie audiences break into spontaneous cheers, but Mad Hot Ballroom has more heart. Director Marilyn Agrelo digs far beneath the surface of her feel-good story, drawing out amazingly candid interviews with her colourful young characters. In the process, she ends up waltzing into such themes as growing up in an increasingly culturally diverse America.

Instructors have been teaching ballroom dancing to New York public-school students for the past 10 years, and Agrelo focuses on three different classes as they prepare for the year-end regional contest. Each school's children face different challenges, whether it's high rates of divorce or heavy poverty. What comes through is that ballroom dancing is a great equalizer. Whether it's sweet, quiet Wilson, fresh from the Dominican Republic and with barely a word of English, or rambunctious Michell, who can't stay out of the principal's office, each finds discipline and connection via the fox trot and the rumba.

Mad Hot Ballroom's crossover appeal comes from watching children make their first awkward moves into adulthood on the dance floor. It's the very incongruity of the subject matter that makes it so entertaining: kids who haven't yet hit puberty are stepping into age-old dance moves that symbolize seduction and courtship. Agrelo is adept at catching the funniest moments: after one flamboyant instructor tells his group to look at their partners "like it's the last time in your life", she zeroes in on the nervous giggles and the boys trying to avoid eye contact. The director also obviously has a gift for building trust with her subjects: not yet jaded by life's bitter torments, they unabashedly dream of being performers one day while at the same time worrying about their more troubled classmates.

Mad Hot Ballroom celebrates its devoted teachers, who are obviously stand-in parents for many of the kids. One instructor can't help weeping even as she's telling her teary group that it doesn't matter whether they won or lost; another breaks into a freeform hoochie-coochie in the excitement of seeing her kids ace the competition.

If there's anything wrong with Mad Hot Ballroom, it's that Agrelo takes too long to get to her climactic dance-off. That's forgivable, though mostly because you get the feeling that editing out scenes of her beloved subjects would be almost as hard as forcing one of the film's teachers to axe a kid from the ballroom-dance team.