Wolff rating: FAIR
Plot summary: Cuban youngster heads to Texas to start a new life in America, and falls for beautiful dancer.
Biased, pithy comments: Either you make a movie with real actors and actresses that can carry their roles and then hope they can handle the dance numbers, or else you say ``Damn thespianship!'' and you hire real dancers and film knockout dancing scenes and pack the movie with them. Alas, this movie splits the difference---it casts serviceably but lacking Chayanne as the lead role, Williams (who *can* dance) but has trouble delivering campy lines with a straight face, and then Kristofferson. Oy, Kristofferson. I have trouble with the guy normally, but in this film he's like a piece of pemmican dressed up in a suit grinding out monotone lines---and please, shoot that shirt before it breeds. Then, after assembling a cast that can dance, it proceeds to burden a 2-hour running time with lots of the pemmican-in-ugly-shirt talking to the marginally-talented Chayanne. Williams and Chayanne have no spark and Chayanne, at least, dances like he's duck---sort of a hunched over hop. Still, at the end, there are some wham-bang dance numbers, but it just reminded me how much I'd rather just watch real Latin pro dance competitors than watch some cardboard plot constructed around them. Is it worth it? For me, the pacing and acting were so stretched out that I found time to think of and shout out amusing rejoinders to the dialog, which made it fun but unsatisfying. For your two hours of dance-movie pleasure, there are far better offerings---``Shall We Dance'' and ``Strictly Ballroom,'' for instance. A movie made with heart but I think some bad editing and scripting mistakes that bring it down.
Other Notes: Pemmican is a kind of Native American food made from beef mixed with fat and berries pressed into small cakes. I don't think this film was made better by my seeing ``Shall We Dance'' two days earlier. I'm going to catch hell for this review from Chayanne fans.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Vanessa L. Williams, Chayanne, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Plowright, Jane Krakowski.
Directed by: Randa Haines