As played by Kerry Armstrong in Razzle Dazzle, Justine is the Australian stage mother from hell. She channels all the disillusionments of her own life ("I could have been a Spice Girl," she frets) into an unstoppable obsession with seeking success for her young daughter, Tenille, in dance contests. These events are so popular in Australia, we are told, that there are more than 700 every year.
Razzle Dazzle: A Journey Into Dance ***
Directed by Darren Ashton. Starring Kerry Armstrong, Ben Miller, Nadine Garner, Denise Roberts PG cert, gen release, 91 min
Described by her mother as "an Ikea of talent", Tenille is a pupil at the dance school run by Mr Jonathon (Ben Miller, admirably deadpan), who remains forever hopeful of guiding his class to victory in the country's most high-profile contest for pre-teen dancers. To his dismay, the award usually goes to the team coached by his arch-rival Miss Elizabeth (Jane Hall), a demanding perfectionist.
Mr Jonathon seems blithely unaware that his past failures may be attributed to his penchant for devising absurdly naive political messages for dance routines. He is called a "cause slut", but this doesn't deter him from concocting scenarios that deal simplistically with child labour, global warming, and the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban.
Darren Ashton's exuberantly over-the-top movie follows the fortunes of the teams as they rehearse for another championship season.
Razzle Dazzle takes the form of a mockumentary in the style of Christopher Guest's A Mighty Wind and Best in Show. This is a timely satire in an era of intensely competitive reality TV shows, in which talent-free performers willingly subject themselves to humiliation in exchange for 15 seconds of what passes for fame.
Imagine Little Miss Sunshine crossed with Strictly Ballroom, and you begin to get the measure of Ashton's often uproariously funny film as it charts the misadventures of its ambitious pre-teen dancers, pushy parents and anxiously insecure teachers. The movie simultaneously questions the pressures and fear of failure these contests instil in such young children.
The cast includes both lead actors from Strictly Ballroom: Paul Mercurio turns up briefly as himself, and Tara Morice in Goth make-up plays the taciturn costume designer described by Mr Jonathon as "the McCartney to my Lennon". John O'Connell, who choreographed Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge, stages the dance sequences with flair, as the youngsters perform with panache to 1970s and 1980s hit singles.
A relic of that era, Leo Sayer, has a cameo as himself, which takes us full circle given his recent, short-lived participation in Celebrity Big Brother.
