Shall We Dance
- Film Worth:$9.50
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Faced with the fact that more than half their life is over, some married men...
Faced with the fact that more than half their life is over, some married men might resort to things like hair implants and women half their age. John Clark (Richard Gere) however, isn't your average man. He's good-looking, has a secure job, a beautiful wife (Susan Sarandon) and two happy, well-adjusted children - but he's not happy. He's living the American dream but he's just not feeling it. Enter Paulina (Jennifer Lopez); the beautiful dance instructor Clark sees forlornly staring out of a window every night on his commute home. She looks the way he feels inside and in a rash moment he gives in to a passion he can't stop and can't explain: ballroom dancing.
Shall We Dance is the American remake of the Japanese hit of the same name. While generally words like "American" and "remake" are enough to make the average thinking-person cringe, add "Jennifer" and "Lopez" and you can't help but wonder what in the world English director Peter Chelsom (Serendipity) was thinking. As it turns out, he was thinking pretty clearly. Gere and Sarandon have amazing on-screen chemistry and it's hard to believe we haven't seen them together before. J-Lo's performance is pretty restrained and there are surprising performances too from Stanley Tucci as a gregarious, yet closet, Latin dancer, and Richard Jenkins as a private detective with a philandering past.
We may never know what it is that makes ballroom dancing so seductive and at the same time completely ridiculous, but it is something that makes films like Shall We Dance contagiously fun to watch.
