Review

Review Date: 3-October-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Shall We Dance? (2004)

As I have mentioned before, I like movies about people who meet in unexpected ways, change each other's lives, and part without conventional resolutions. Such stories seem to describe the potential richness of the human experience more than commonplace tales like boy-meets-girl or father-reconciles-with-son. "Roman Holiday" always springs to mind as a good example; so does the 1997 Japanese import "Shall We Dance?", which delighted me in large part because it related how a bored businessman and a heartbroken dancer benefitted from a temporary, mutually inspiring relationship that had nothing to do with love. Regrettably, in turning the film into an American production writer Audrey Wells and director Peter Chelsom have lost the pleasing subtlety of "Shall We Dance?". Their version is a something-for-everybody, feel-good picture in which one man's decision to break out of a rut somehow catapults nearly a dozen people straight into a happy ending.

The well-chosen cast of "Shall We Dance?" includes Richard Gere as a lawyer whose perfect life doesn't fully satisfy, Susan Sarandon as his concerned but considerate wife, and Jennifer Lopez as a ballroom dance instructor nursing a major depression. From an el on the way home from work, Gere glimpses Lopez pining at her studio window and associates her with the malaise from which he suffers. A few days later, he leaves the train and takes a hesitant step into her world, signing up for a beginners' dance class before he even realizes what he's doing. He has a crush, yes, but also a void inside that cries out to be filled, and some part of him believes that the beautiful, sad-eyed woman in Miss Mitzi's dancing school can show him the way. Since he feels guilty about searching for answers away from home (or even having serious questions), he neglects to inform his wife of his new hobby, which leads her to suspect he's having an affair.

So far, so good; if the movie focused on Gere's relationships with these two important women it might have been a winner. But vast amounts of screen time are accorded to secondary characters whose purpose and outcome are immediately apparent and therefore patently uninteresting. The award for the most egregiously superfluous character goes to Stanley Tucci as another lawyer who harbors a secret love of wigs, false tans, and sequins. (He ought to have been edited out of the movie altogether.) Then there are the two lovable losers in Gere's dance class (Bobby Cannavale, Omar Benson Miller), along with the nostalgic Miss Mitzi (Anita Gillette) and the brash but softhearted Bobbie (Lisa Ann Walter), who isn't nearly as fat or unattractive as we're supposed to laugh at/pity her for being. (Inexplicably, she has a bigger role than Lopez.) To give Sarandon something to do, the script bogs her down with a pair of private investigators (Richard Jenkins, Nick Cannon) and a couple of needless coworkers. The original film included a few subordinates to add humor and emphasize the shame associated with ballroom dancing in Japan, but here they feel like weeds threatening to take over the plot. Just when you're about to get caught up in a moment, some clumsy, irrelevant scene intrudes and breaks the spell, making "Shall We Dance?" a well-meaning remake but a pale reflection of its source.

Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.