Anyone even remotely interested in seeing this? I don't know if you should bother.

As nearly every mediocre humanitarian documentary begins, War Dance opens with a puppy-dog-faced child explaining its purpose, “It’s difficult for people to understand our story, but if we don’t tell you, you won’t know.” The problem here is that this typical tale is not difficult to comprehend, even if the maudlin portrait of musical youngsters orphaned by vicious rebels makes it hard to swallow. This narrative of art overcoming violence and oppression, while inherently important, flaunts harrowing anecdotes as if the civil war in Uganda was never documented before, taking precious time away from its subject of dance as therapy and escape. It opts to trade in raw emotion for ostentatious cinematography and overstatement. Co-directors Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine come close to achieving genuine gravitas, but the film quickly devolves into an African version of Mad Hot Ballroom, exploiting cuteness and treating Ugandan tradition like an exotic fad.