Dance With Me

Dance With Me
by Randa Haines

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DVD Reviews of Dance With Me

DVD Review: Dance romance's beat a little uneven
Summary: 3 Stars

Puerto Rican heart throb Chayanne, whose real first name is Elmer, plays a young Cuban named Rafael. When his mother dies, he contacts a man named John [Kris Kristofferson] in Texas who his mom always claimed was the father. Rafael is the result of a ship board romance, and while John invites Rafael to come to America, he does not know it's his son who will arrive.

Rafael becomes the maintenance man at John's run down ballroom dance school. There he meets gorgeous, talented and intelligent Ruby Sinclair [Vanessa L. Williams], who is an instructor. It's love at first sight for Rafael, but Ruby has been burned by love once too often and has an illegitimate son to prove it.

The school is peopled by odd ball characters, who are practicing for a national championship in Las Vegas. They spend much more time batting uninspired one-liners back and forth than they do preparing for the contest. The exceptions are Ruby and one other woman.

Will John follow through on his plan to close the school? How will he react when he finds out Rafael is his son? When will Ruby get over her pride and fall for Rafael? Will our Cuban hero ever get to dance? Will he ever stop smiling?

The predictable story might have been fine if its delivery had been energetic. Director Randa Haines chose to keep the pace of it slow, which conflicts with the dance sequences. They make the movie come alive. There are three show stopping numbers, and for someone like me who likes dancing, they are worth the price of the video rental. Otherwise, the only interesting bit to me was watching Rafael and Ruby come to terms with each other over what defines dancing. Both their styles are terrific, but his is of the streets, while hers is of the classroom. This is the first movie I've seen which shows that two people may be dancers, but that doesn't mean they can dance with each other.

One great dance routine comes early in the movie. Rafael burns up the dance floor at a Latin disco in Texas. The rest come at the end during the ballroom competition, where couples doing the Rumba, the Samba, the Cha Cha and the Tango show us couch potatoes that we may be missing a lot in life. There's about an hour between the first and last dance numbers, and this is where the movie really drags.

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