A more than pleasant diversion

Rating: 7/10 (26 September 2004)

OK, I went to see the preview of "Shall We Dance" tonight. First of all, the movie itself is pretty good, if not great. Briefly, what works about it is that the things that you expect to happen in a romantic comedy, especially as you are watching it, don't necessarily happen. I won't say anymore in case I blow the entire plot. And while it's not laugh-out-loud funny all the time, there are a lot of nice moments, and the film has a lot of heart. And everyone in it is good, even Jennifer Lopez, who actually isn't in the movie a lot. This is really Richard Gere's film, and he does a great job in the role of a happily married, successful man who is just missing that certain spark in his life and finds it in an unusual place.
This will be a great date movie, a nice way to spend an afternoon and evening. I don't know how it will do at the box office, but I can see it have a lot of success on DVD. Oh, yeah, the dance sequences, rock, particularly one Gere and Lopez have about two-thirds of the way through.