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Shall We Dance
Release Date: October 15,
2004
Studio: Miramax Films
Director: Peter Chelsom
Screenwriter: Audrey Wells
Starring: Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon, Stanley
Tucci, Bobby Canavale, Nick Cannon, Richard Jenkins, Mya, Lisa Ann Walter,
Deborah Yates
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some sexual references and brief language)
Plot Summary: A workaholic lawyer's life and
marriage take an unexpected twirl when he follows a beautiful woman to a Chicago
dance studio and becomes a clandestine ballroom dance competitor in "Shall We
Dance". What begins as a romantic comedy soon turns into an exhilarating tale
about the unexpected places one finds passion
Reviewed by Peter
Veugelaers © 2004
- Don't be deceived -- get out of cinema quick!
Shall
we Dance is a celebration of dancing but is no Dirty Dancing,
too refined for the mature audience it is aiming at. Lightly entertaining, and
warm and sweet, but lacking the zest and cohesion to work, this is above all an
ethereal celebration of dancing without a distracting soundtrack.
In what looks like a conventional romantic liaison between Richard Gere and
Jennifer Lopez is put off centre when the running gag is female frustration with
the inability of males to please them, played for laughs and offering little of
that.
This is no romance, instead is a brief encounter between a successful married
man and a discouraged ballroom dancer.
Lawyer John Clark (Gere) takes up ballroom dancing to bring back some happiness
into his life having glimpsed a young woman trainer Paulina (Lopez) through the
local dance club window night after night while commuting home from work. Gere’s
wife (Susan Sarandon) is oblivious to his new found interest but suspects he is
having an affair.
One expects certain elements to a romantic musical comedy. We’ve passed the
formulaic MGM Mickey Rooney – Judy Garland cycle of comedy-musicals, even
Dirty Dancing did not pretend to be nothing else than a sultry summer goggle
for pubescent teenagers.
If Shall we Dance is pretending to be American Beauty gone soft
core it is not convincing. The treatment of its ideas is embarrassingly
tackled. It doesn’t work as being a budding romance between the leads, a coming
of age mid-life crisis for frustrated Gere, while dabbling in issues of
faithfulness and meaningfulness in a modern upper class American marriage, which
it breezily resolves. No wonder Gere appears vacant and bemused on occasions. He
does better, all the same, than the script provides.
The competitive dance scenes are welcome to enliven a paper thin plot, but
there are too little of them to sustain and will keep mainly ballroom dance fans
pleased. Predictably, the highlight is a private dancing scene between Gere and
Lopez where they impress.
The two stars are appealing and attractive – Lopez has the appropriate Latino
looks and Gere is as charming as he ever has been – but they don’t fire
chemistry on the screen, or have strong characterisations. With good
performances from the supporting cast, including Stanley Tucci’s sympathetically
misunderstood male ballroom dancer, the ending is upbeat and fuzzy but
anti-climatic and soppy.
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