Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School

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Where-are-they-now cast fails to elevate long-titled, clichéd vehicle

By: CHRIS WANGLER

4/5/2006 11:36:56 AM

Rating: 1.0 stars

BLECH: Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School

This latest dance-as-therapy vehicle is a scattered, cliché’d look at male grief. A dying stranger (John Goodman) asks depressed baker Frank (Robert Carlyle) to keep a 40-year-old pact by meeting up with a woman he once loved. The chick doesn’t show, but before long Frank is doing the cha-cha, coping with his wife’s suicide, and nailing a one-legged travel agent (Marisa Tomei). After all, explains the school’s droll headmistress (Mary Steenburgen), “dance can color your life in joyous shades of brilliant magenta that you never knew existed.” Blech. Decent perfs from the where-are-they-now cast are the only draw here. Director Randall Miller’s indie æsthetics and confusing flashbacks clash badly with the made-for-TV conceit, so don’t expect to reach for the Kleenex. There’s nothing worse than a long title for a shitty movie.

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