Shall We Dance (Widescreen) (2004)

Los Angeles Times
"Gere and Sarandon make middle-age seem enviably alluring, and Lopez is as disciplined as Paulina in one of her best performances yet." 10/15/2004 p.E10

ReelViews 7 of 10
Shall We Dance? is a remake of the 1997 Japanese feature by the same name...The movie was so beloved amongst art-house goers that Miramax, who snapped up the North American rights, commissioned a re-make. And, to further enhance anticipation of the new version, they declined to make the Japanese original available on home video. Now, some seven years later, we finally get to see how screenwriter Audrey Welles (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) and director Peter Chelsom (Serendipity) see this story unspooling. To say that it's not worth the wait is an understatement...Dancing is supposed to be a passionate and sensual endeavor. The best screen movies capture the unspoken essence of the interaction between partners. Films like Strictly Ballroom and Tango crackle with electricity. The dance scenes come alive. Such is not the case in Shall We Dance? Here, there's a stateless to the numbers. They are, in a word, boring. Even the antics of Stanley Tucci, playing a manic Latin dancer, can't liven things up. In choreographing the dance sequences, Chelsom shows too much restraint and good taste. As a result, the ending, although it makes perfect sense and offers closure, seems muted and oddly unsatisfying. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
This is not a cutting-edge movie. The characters are broad, what happens is predictable, and of course, everything ends up in a big ballroom dancing competition, and (are you ready for this?) at the crucial moment, we get the obligatory scene where the loved one arrives in the audience, sees what is happening and understands all...Conventional as it may be, "Shall We Dance?" offers genuine delights. The fact that Paulina is uninterested in romance with John comes as sort of a relief, freeing the story to be about something other than the inexorable collision of their genitals. It can be about how John feels about his life, about why it might be useful for a middle-aged lawyer to jump the rails and take up ballroom dance. And about the gallery of supporting characters, who get enough screen time to become engaging...There's one area where the American remake is less than convincing. In the Japanese version, we believe that a faithful wife might remain at home evening after evening while her salaryman husband returned long after work. That's part of the Japanese office culture. That an American wife would put up with it is more problematical...I enjoyed the Japanese version so much I invited it to my Overlooked Film Festival a few years ago, but this remake offers pleasures of its own. - Roger Ebert