Shall We Dance

In a Nutshell: Not what you expect (not a traditional rom-com, or much of a rom-com for that matter), but still quite good. Needed more Stanley Tucci! Worth seeing.

Quick Plot: A bored lawyer signs up for ballroom dance lessons (without telling his wife) after spotting a beautiful instructor in the window on his way home.

In Detail: This is really not a romantic comedy at all. It has some romance, and it has some funny parts (some *very* funny parts), but it is primarily a drama. Going into it with that knowledge I think would have helped me with this movie; I kept getting tripped up by it not going where I thought it was going to go. I do think less blond chick (Bobbie) and more Stanley Tucci would have helped a lot (I adore Tucci in roles like this). I definitely think I need to see it again. I liked Gere okay, I thought Jennifer Lopez was quite good, the peripheral characters were fun. But to me, the master performance in this film is Susan Sarandon. She is always amazing, but this one was quite subtle and layered. She also gives one of the most powerful quotes about marriage I have ever heard. The whole film was worth that one line, and it is so powerful (to me, at least), that I will give it to you here: "We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'." Amen. Worth seeing.

Will I Buy It? Not at this point. I definitely need to see it again with different expectations. Perhaps that will change my mind.