If you enjoy Christopher Guest's parodic mockumentaries, you should try Australian Darren Ashton's movie about the awful nature of children's dance competitions. It isn't as hilarious as Guest's films but its gentler satire works equally well.

Set to the sound of kitschy Seventies and Eighties hits, it takes aim at the pushy parents who live vicariously through their kids and the absurd dance masters who try to coach their charges into winning form. The kids are well-observed, too, often as ambitious as their parents, but less able to see what they are doing to themselves in the effort to get into showbiz.

Razzle Dazzle is nicely written by Robin Ince, and he takes care not to caricature characters who, in fact, are quite able to parody themselves.

British actor Ben Miller and Australian Jane Hall are excellent as the dance teachers, the former trying Theatre of Cruelty techniques on his charges, the latter a hidebound traditionalist. Kerry Armstrong is the pushiest mom and you recognise her from many other well-known examples.

Altogether this is an amusing if small-scale epic that works all the better for not going over the top. And the dance sequences are quite something to see.