Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.


Someday I’m going to learn to dance. I swear it. Not just the Stairway to Heaven Shuffle (perfected by seventh graders everywhere) either. I mean real dances. The Tango. The Waltz. The Ruuuuummmbaaaaaaa. The kind of dancing that will make me look like I’m floating across the floor, where I will wear ball gowns and actually move my feet. And I will have a partner named Lorenzo……… Okay, maybe not. Maybe the closest I’ll ever get is watching Richard Gere play a dork who wants to dance his way out of his mid-life crisis. You know what? I can live with that.

Shall We Dance (2004) chronicles the road to the dance of John (Gere), a sort of frumpy everyman (albeit an everyman who looks like Richard Gere – so not quite every man). John has a wife, Bev (Susan Sarandon), that he loves and kids who are growing up and away from him as he looks on from the sidelines. He loves his family. His life is full to the brim – probably too full, since he and his wife have little time together. Yet as he rides the train home from work he’s drawn to the solitary figure of a young woman (Jennifer Lopez) in the window of a dance studio. So drawn that he actually gets off that train one day and makes his way inside, only to find himself swept up in a beginners ballroom dance class. Lacking the will – and the desire – to escape, he gets drawn into this world, so unlike his own. The film follows John through the class and the changes it brings to his life and the lives of those around him.

Wow, that sounds unbearably corny. And it should be unbearably corny on the screen – but it isn’t. Writers Masayuki Suo and Audrey Wells hold the plot together and director Peter Chelson pulls off the tremendous feat of not only making the entire production watchable, but doing it with Jennifer Lopez in a primary role. That alone is almost worthy of an Oscar for sheer improbability. As written, the story brings a group of misfits together in an unusual setting and puts them through a lot of hard work, making them into a team. The outline is terribly unoriginal, but the story is filled with wonderful little moments, interesting characters and a delightful combination of the trite and the touching. We get the rather tired story of the misfits, but it’s wrapped around the story of John and his bumbling through a crisis he can’t even quite name. We also get Bev’s fabulous reaction to her husband’s increasingly odd behavior. Susan Sarandon milks this role for everything its worth, giving us a wife we can relate to, a wife we can sympathize with and a wife we can laugh at on occasion. It is this, the story of John’s real life, which brings the story out of the cliché and into something more real, more heartfelt. John is not just a man looking for a pretty girl; he’s a man looking for something missing in his life. Not sex, but joy.

Gere more than understands his role here. He’s cast against type for most of the film as a shy, rather awkward man with little grace and not much confidence. He’s drawn to the place because of the pretty girl, but not entirely because she’s pretty. Yes, he’s attracted to her, but no, he isn’t looking to spice up his love life. He doesn’t seem to quite know what he’s looking for. He only knows that he’s slowly finding it. Not with her, with the others and with dancing. She’s part of it, but it’s more about him – and his life. Gere does a great job here, not only because he gets the role, but because we believe him. We believe he loves his family, we believe he needs something else, we believe he’s as confused as he seems when he finds himself becoming a part of this weird little scene in a rundown dance studio.

Along with a well written story and fine performances from both Gere and Sarandon, we have what is arguably the shining star of Shall We Dance - and that is the entire supporting cast. As the formula dictates, we must have our requisite collection of oddballs to make up a fittingly quirky ensemble – that’s where most of the humor is going to come from. But very few films manage to populate their strange little world with such an incredible array of performers, each bringing something special to their own oddball. First and foremost is, without a doubt, Stanley Tucci. Never bad in anything, the man stands head and shoulders above the entire ensemble with the funniest performance in the film. Playing Link, he both works with John as a straight laced attorney and dances up a storm in secret. As he bemoans the life of the straight man who loves to dress in sequins and dance, all the while wiping away the remnants of his bright orange fake tan, we all know that this is the character that will bring with him the greatest amount of silliness, the most adoringly exaggerated dances, the most wonderful sense of the absurd. He is simply delightful.

The rest of the cast, though not on the level of Tucci (then, really, who is?), is fabulous. From Bobby Canavale as Chic, the macho beginning student, to Omar Miller as Vern, the mountain of a man working so hard at being graceful and lithe, to Miss Mitzi (Anita Gillette) as the faded rose of a dancer who owns the studio, these are performances and characters that don’t scream QUIRKY just for the sake of being quirky. Oh, they’re odd, but the have an underlying sense of universality to them that makes them more than just weird. They’re all of us, just exaggerated. Also standing out – far out – is Richard Jenkins as a private investigator hired by Bev. He’s goofy, he’s funny, and he’s just perceptive enough to make his character into something of a narrator for the underlying conflict within John and between John and Bev. This is a masterful performance of a small role that could have easily been a throw-away, but Jenkins pulls it out of the dust bin, wipes it off and makes it his own.

Then we have the movie’s greatest tragedy. The one thing that makes us cringe even as we delight in the bounty of good things to be enjoyed. That tragedy has a name and that name is Jennifer Lopez. She’s awful. Her line delivery is stilted and affectless, her depression weak and unbelievable, her love of dancing shifting wildly between emotionless and dull and borderline pornographic. She is the only one in the film that does not seem to understand that the film is not about John wanting to have an affair. Her facial expressions during their dance scene are far too sexual; as if that’s the only acting she knows how to do. She has two speeds here - boring and bimbo. Thankfully, her character is as limited as is possible; as though the director recognizes his weak link and minimizes the time she actually spends speaking. Her character is, for all her lack of quirks and seeming normality in comparison to the others, the least believable because she gives by far the weakest performance. We don’t care about this woman, plain and simple. The story is written for her to be something of an enigma, a woman we want to know more about, whose sadness is palpable from her very body posture. But she isn’t. She’s just dull. Shall We Dance should have been a terrific movie, a fabulous success. Instead it’s just above average. Lopez drags it down with every scene she’s in, which is too bad for the other cast members who put up such great performances. Amazingly enough, however, she doesn’t torpedo the entire film. Chelson has put together so much talent and used it to such good effect that even this stinker of a performance can’t completely destroy it. For every wretched moment she is on screen are five moments where the others shine brightly enough to cover her drab, boring performance.

In the end, Shall We Dance turns out to be a fun movie, filled with fine performances and with a director who knows how to bring together quirky and touching in a way that doesn’t make us want to barf. Sparked by a fabulous supporting cast, most of the movie shines with good fun and a sweet underlying story of a man with a space in his life that he desperately needs to fill. The one weak sport is the performance of Jennifer Lopez, which although wretched, still can’t suck the fun out of the rest of the film. Despite how badly she stinks, the others are so good that you can, in fact, ignore her and enjoy the rest, which I suggest is exactly what you do. After you learn to Ruuuumbaaaa, that is….


Recommended: Yes