Obnoxious, unfunny tripe

Rating: 4/10 (15 January 2007)

Americanization of the hit 1996 movie from Japan features Richard Gere as a Chicago lawyer (supposedly overworked, yet we never see him break a sweat) who takes dance lessons at night without telling his wife--she gets suspicious and hires a private detective. Brightly-painted balderdash, wasting Susan Sarandon as the spouse and turning all the supporting characters into cartoony caricatures (often at the expense of the poor actors). The script, flabby and mean-spirited, features one witless meet-cute after another. Jennifer Lopez is lost in the vacuous role of a substitute dance teacher--always standing by a window, bathed in red light--who trades gibberish lines with Richard Gere that sound as if the screenwriter neither understands English nor Japanese! This is one wasted opportunity, deluding Gere's natural charisma while giving the term 'star vehicle' a bad name. *1/2 from ****