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In Peter Chelsom’s remake of Masayuki Suo’s charming 1996 Japanese comedy, Richard Gere plays an upper-middle-class lawyer who’s bored with his life — the beautiful house, the lovely successful wife (Susan Sarandon), the two charming kids. He spots Jennifer Lopez, a ballroom dancer trying to get over professional and personal disappointment, in a window every night as his train passes her dance studio. One evening, on impulse, he checks it out and winds up signing on for a beginning ballroom-dance class. The other students are a disappointing collection of clichés: the overweight guy who sweats a lot, the homophobic creep, the obnoxious girl who can’t get a partner. Only Stanley Tucci, as a straight guy who loves ballroom dance but is afraid to tell anyone, feels like a fully formed, if ridiculous, character. Gere plays middle-class malaise well — he carries himself with a worn, tired dignity that seems out of place in this otherwise obvious film. Lopez, for her part, substitutes standing up straight and looking serious for acting; only in her dancing scenes, which conjure her music videos, does she come alive. Shall We Dance? gives us characters whose lives are transformed by the beauty and joy of dancing without ever showing us how. (106 minutes)
BY BROOKE HOLGERSON
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