BOOGIE NIGHTS

REVIEWED - SHALL WE DANCE?: Transplanting Masayuki Suo's charming 1997 Japanese movie of the same title from Tokyo to Chicago, Peter Chelsom's remake remains essentially faithful to the original, which itself had borrowed more than a few steps from Strictly Ballroom.

This time it's Richard Gere who plays the shy, uptight middle-aged central character. John Clark is a property lawyer who has spent 20 years of his life going through the same daily routine until, intrigued by the sight of Miss Mitzi's Ballroom Dance School on his train journey home every evening, he learns a few new routines on the dance floor and is liberated by the experience.

John's wife (Susan Sarandon in a thankless role) becomes so suspicious when he claims to be working late in the evenings that she hires a private detective (Richard Jenkins, the deceased paterfamilias from Six Feet Under) to follow John and check if he's having a secret affair.

However, there is no fear of that happening with the glacial dance instructor, Paulina (Jennifer Lopez), who is nursing a broken heart and has transferred her affections from men to her wardrobe. When her coat is stained, she breaks down in tears, even though, we are told, her entire family works in the dry cleaning business. And although it is said that the school run by the tipsy Miss Mitzi is struggling, Paulina turns up in a sleek new outfit in just about every scene.

Then again, narrative logic is clearly not a priority in a movie as calculatedly sentimental as this twee and laboured exercise, and it only comes to life in the reasonably entertaining ballroom dancing contest to which it inevitably builds.

In a film where most cast members are saddled with blandly underwritten roles, Stanley Tucci wisely dares to break the mould with an outsized, high-camp portrayal of a particularly flamboyant dancer.