Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
September 27, 2009 by Ballroom Dance Lover
Filed under Ballroom Dance Steps
Product Description
FRANK KEANE IS A BAKER BY TRADE BUT NOW A MAN CONSUMED BY HIS WIFE’S DEATH. WHEN FATE INTERVENES, HE PULLS OVER TO HELP A STRANGER IN A CAR WRECK, A MAN NEAR DEATH WHO URGENTLY DISCLOSES A PLANNED REUNION, A MEETING WITH A LOST CHILDHOOD LOVE AT A SCHOOL FOR BALLROOM DANCE.Amazon.com
When lonely hearts want to connect, is there any better way, really, than dancing? Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School is a sweet indie valentine to dance, and to the connection of lost, broken souls. The stellar cast is led by English Everyguy Robert Carlyle, a widower who believes he’s fulfilling a dying man’s last wish–to find a long-lost love–by showing up at a Thursday night dance class. Carlyle is by… More >>
Marilyn Hotchkiss’ Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
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Don’t get this movie expecting to see any good dancing. Even the supposed dance teacher can’t dance. Rather, she dances as if she had at most 1 or 2 lessons. In the opening dance scene, where she is supposedly teaching the main character “Lindy Hop,” she instead teaches East Coast Swing. . . and teaches an underarm turn as being “the basic.” Such nonsense.
So, if you are interested in watching beginners trying to dance, and can ignore that their characters are supposed to be actually able to dance, by all means, watch this movie. Otherwise, use the hours that you would have spent on this movie dancing yourself! It will be a much better use of your time.
Rating: 1 / 5
Writer-director Randall Miller tries far too hard to make a multi-layered film about spiritual reawakening that he defaults into either formula or incoherence to move his low-budget movie along. With its unwieldy title signaling its contrivance, the 2006 dramedy, co-written by Miller and his wife Jody Savin, is an oddly unsatisfying film that attempts to track three different timelines through jumpy edits and differing film stock. Filmed in irritating bleached tones, the first storyline focuses on Frank Keane, an Irishman who moved his family’s baking business to California. Shell-shocked from his wife’s recent suicide, he comes upon a road accident which has left the driver badly hurt and pinned inside his car. The victim is Steve Mills, an overweight, seemingly gregarious man who was rushing to meet Linda, his childhood crush from forty years earlier, in the place where they last saw each other.
This kick-starts the second storyline, which flashes back to Steve’s pre-adolescence when he accidentally gave Linda a black eye during a rough game of British Bulldog. With heavy echoes of “The Wonder Years”, this portion of the movie is actually footage from Miller’s 1990 short with the same title. It shows Steve and Linda first dancing at the Marilyn Hotchkiss ballroom. With Steve sharing his memories with Frank and Frank attempting to keep Steve conscious on the way to the hospital, we are given the third storyline which takes place again in the Marilyn Hotchkiss ballroom, this time in the present day. This time, in Steve’s place, Frank shows up for dance class trying to find the now adult Linda amid a gallery of eccentric characters learning to dance under the tutelage of the late Marilyn’s daughter, Marienne. Even more characters are introduced by way of Frank’s therapy support group of recently widowed men.
The cumulative result is a hodgepodge of artificial moments that feed into Miller’s overriding theme of getting on with one’s life in spite of the barriers one faces. For such a potentially strong ensemble, the performances are variable though mainly because most of the actors are not given enough screen time to flesh out their stereotypical characters. With his mangy-looking hair and sad eyes, Robert Carlyle does well enough as Frank, though his zombie-like behavior at the outset is enough to unsettle anyone. John Goodman plays Steve as the accident victim, though the combination of his bulky, uncomfortable-looking frame and his wheezing delivery is hard to watch for an extended period. Marisa Tomei affectingly portrays Frank’s new love interest, Meredith, who holds a secret and has an intractable link to her constant dance partner, Randall, played convincingly by Donnie Wahlberg as an egocentric bully who feels he owns the dance floor.
Others are simply wasted in smaller roles – an affected Mary Steenburgen as the prim Marienne who demands order and courtesy in her late mother’s dance hall; Sonia Braga as a flirtatious dancer; and as members of Frank’s support group, Sean Astin, Adam Arkin, David Paymer and Ernie Hudson. The ending contains something of a twist, and Camryn Manheim and Danny DeVito show up late in the film in intriguing cameos. But by that point, it all comes too late due to the overlapping storylines and sluggish pacing. The DVD has rather perfunctory commentary from Miller, Savin and actor Elden Hensen, who plays both Frank’s bakery co-worker in the modern sequences and Sam in the vintage flashbacks filmed in 1990 when he was thirteen. The other significant extra is the original 1990 short with William Hurt providing the memory flashback voiceover as the adult Sam. The package strangely does not make clear that this is the inspiration for the later film, so it seems like a patched-together version of the flashback scenes.
Rating: 2 / 5
The movie is beautiful. I loved it. Really! The story line (described above) is pretty far-fetched, but the characters are believable and call our deep compassion and understanding into an active participation. Aristotle would have loved the possibilities for catharsis in this film!
My only lament is that they desperately needed to hire a good dance coach. The dancing is mediocre–at best. Even worse, there are many obvious errors a good dance coach would have caught: teaching triple rhythm swing and calling it Lindy-hop; teaching slow waltz, and then playing a Viennese waltz while they danced slow waltz; etc. I’ll stop picking at it before I ruin it for you…
Two points of redemption keep this high on my dance movie list: The characters find and vocalize a passion for dance. Every serious dancer or dancer want-to-be will identify with the “I need my dancing” aspect of this film. Second, there is a wonderful picture of a go-a-second-mile sort of forgivenness that calls us all to be gracious and good to one another.
Rating: 4 / 5
Great cast including Marisa Tomei, Donnie Wahlberg, Mary Steenburgen, Sonia Braga, Sean Astin, Adam Arkin, David Paymer and Ernie Hudson, Camryn Manheim, Danny DeVito … and a great build-up.
But the ending was just boring, hohum, and disappointing. Manheim was a bit hard-edged and too brunette. She wasn’t quite right. “Lisa” should have been shown waiting outside in a car watching for her true love. I didn’t get what she was looking at in the cigar box – was it a ticket from the old days, or a ticket to the 5th day,5th month, 5th year of the millenium date?
The ending lacked emotional punch.
Rating: 4 / 5
A wonderfully light romantic comedy with a stellar cast. I enjoy the double storyline that takes place throughout the film. This would generally be a chick flick, but the boyfriend enjoyed it too.
Rating: 4 / 5