Saturday, October 29, 2005

Shall We Dance - Movie Review

Shall We Dance, 2004, with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Lopez, astounded me.  I thought I would hate it.  A businessman has a mid-life crisis -- so who cares.  And he solves it by learning to ballroom dance -- oh, come on.
But it is fascinating, yes, even the dancing. It reminded me that I was a good dancer, once, in high school, before W.W.II. I even had the ambition to at some time in my life, go to a dance in full formal, not just tux, full formal tails, pure white, like Fred Astaire. (That's laughable now, but back then, well...)
Susan has a line that brought me up short, woke me up.  She says, "We each need a witness to our lives."  We need someone to watch our successes and crises.  Wow, I thought, that's why we pair off in daily lives and online.  We need someone to be a witness to the things we are proud of, and even the pains we bear. How come I hadn't thought of that before?
Oh, and Jennifer Lopez wears a dress in the last scene that rivals the one that brought her to our attention at the Oscars or Emmys a few years back, the one that made Time and AOL pages.  And little J-Lo can act with the likes of Gere and Sarandon.
A happy surprise on a Saturday afternoon. 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved to dance and I got quite good at it. Not sure I could even hold my balance anymore. Sometime I am sorry I let someone take it away from me. Paula

Anonymous said...

I am only sorry you never got to dance in full formal, like Fred Astaire! Margo

Anonymous said...

I really enjoy your journal!!

Anonymous said...

Wow...exactly!  That was my favorite line of the movie, too.  It changed the way I look at everyone in my life.  Everything else you said, too, I felt just the same way about that movie.  By the way, I have enjoyed witnessing your journaling life for several months now.  Sometimes I laugh out loud, sometimes I feel like crying, other times I don't know what you're talking about, or else I disagree completely.  But it's always an interesting read.  Keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Chuck,

Both my wife and I enjoyed Shall We Dance. It's not an Oscar-caliber performance, but a nice, solid bit of story telling that held our attention despite all the myriad demands life makes on us.

While I never had the opportunity to do the white tails, I did do full "black tie and tails" on several occasions back in the '60's at the Debutante balls in NYC. It was a blast...

wil

http://journals.aol.com/hewasolddog299/snoozeII/

Anonymous said...

After three years at Mrs. Woolson's Ballroom Dancing School in junior high, I longed to waltz with someone I didn't tower over. As I grew to six feet tall in high school, that didn't seem to be a remote possibility. Luckily by the time I graduated, we were doing the twist and for the next umpteen years everybody danced apart. Until my 30th college reunion. An old classmate asked if I wanted to do some latin dance I didn't know. Don't worry, he said. Just follow me. It was great. Finally, I could follow effortlessly and even feel graceful. Why? A former basketball player, he was seven feet tall.  

Think I'll rent Shall We Dance and imagine it with very tall people.  

Mrs. L

Anonymous said...

I loved this movie too.

Anonymous said...

I love the 65 year old Protagonist with the 25 year old hardbody Latin supermodel.