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Shall We Dance transports the audience into the world of vintage music and ballroom dancing, writes
Ervell E. Menezes
Hollywood has a way of regurgitating its old movies and Shall we dance is taken from the line and song in The King and I where Yul Brynner asks Deborah Kerr to dance. There is also a Japanese film of the same title and ballroom dancers will welcome this tribute to the almost forgotten art of ballroom dancing. When New York lawyer John Clerk (Richard Gere) from his subway train passes a dancing school he is infatuated by a face at the window, which we know later belongs to dancing instructor Paulina (Jennifer Lopez). Whether it is the woman or the dance he is enchanted with is rather confusing but it is a good excuse to launch the viewer into the charming old world of ballroom dancing and with a wealth of vintage music to fall back on (Moon River, Sway With Me among others), director goes the whole hog in providing another rare species of cinema genre—the Hollywood musical. Fresh from his Chicago success, Gere waltzes his way right through the film on "the light fantastic toe" as it were. Bored with dealing with the wills to his clients he needs a break—a new interest in life. And while his wife Susan Sarandon suspects he’s having an affair, Gere goes headlong on this dancing spree. At first rebuffed by Jennifer Lopez, who does not want to mix dancing with romance, he seems to turn to the other cheek, dancing. Credibility is a bit of a casualty and when Lopez later responds one is almost in never-never land but if one overlooks these glitches, the fare is quite enjoyable as the band plays on and the diverse characters help provide a right royal entertainer in the best traditions of the 1950s and 1960s. Stanley Tucci is one of the idiosyncratic characters to say nothing of the dance teacher (it’s her school, Miss Mitzi’s Dance School), Gere’s fellow learners, the burly Black Vern (Omar Benson Miller) and the Latino looking Chic (Bobby Cannavale), the detective hired by Sarandon and of course Sarandon and the daughter, they provide the much-needed variety (or is it diversity ?). The old dance forms like the waltz, the cha-cha-cha and the rumba get a good deal of footage. There is a good line about the rumba being "a vertical expression of a horizontal wish" and a witty screenplay gives the film enough substance to provide a smoke screen over the licence to make the dance form itself the winner. There’s a touch of Pretty Woman too though minus the Richard Gere on a white stallion. In true Hollywood tradition all the loose ends are neatly tied up and all’s well that ends well though credibility is now and then shoved under the carpet. The zing is distinctive and keeps the viewer on a high much after he’s left the cinema house.
Inconsistent Constantine Technically adept,
the story is lost in transition. This supernatural thriller is avoidable
Constantine is no Roman emperor or soccer coach. Comics lovers may know him as a character from the British comic book series Hellblazer, a supernatural thriller that attempts to be in the same league as The Exorcist and The Omen but which sadly falls on its face. John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) is a mysterious chain-smoking, anti-hero who is stranded in a limbo between heaven and hell after failing to commit suicide. To add to his woes he comes detective Angela Dodson (Rachel Weisz) who is investigating the death (or suicide) of her twin sister (also Weisz). What this duo goes through is surprisingly incoherent and the story plods along in a sort of limbo for the viewer. Constantine may start with the Bond line "this is Constantine, John Constantine," but that’s as far as the resemblance goes. He may also be castigated by the Angel Gabriel (Tilda Swinton) "you’re going to die young, you smoke 30 cigarettes a day, you’re fu…." but that too makes a little impact on this hero who has a knack of seeing demons and angels as they exist on the Los Angeles horizon. Lurking in the background of course, is the devil (Peter Stormare). It is a fairly innocuous screenplay by Kevin Brodin and Frank Cappello but music video whiz director Frank Lawrence seems to be all at sea in this new medium. That he has the benefit of two talented performers doesn’t help one bit as the film labours its way along. If there is some connection between the director and the audience it may have been lost in transition. Reeves and Weisz are like black cats in dark rooms looking for what you know…. The net result is a
technically adept film with little substance and even less cumulative
build-up that totters along till it virtually gets out of breath. Quite
avoidable. |
