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MARILYN HOTCHKISS BALLROOM DANCING & CHARM SCHOOL
Directed & Edited by: Randall Miller.
Produced by: Eileen Craft, Randall Miller, Morris Ruskin & Jody Savin.
Written by: Randall Miller & Jody Savin.
Director of Photography: Jonathan Sela.
Music by: Mark Adler.
Released by: Samuel Goldwyn.
Country of Origin: USA. 103 min. Rated: PG-13.
With: Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei, Mary Steenburgen, Donnie Wahlberg, John Goodman & Sean Astin.

In 1990, director Randall Miller made a short film set in 1962, “Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School,” about a girl-hating boy who discovers he likes a girl at the school. The new feature film of the same name takes place 40 years later, when the boy in question, now the grown-up Steve (John Goodman), wants to fulfill the promise he made to Lisa to meet her again at the school.

However, Steve has a car accident on the way, witnessed by Frank (Robert Carlyle), a recent widower who cannot get over his wife’s death. His only outings are for the widowers’ support group he attends (which is not helping). Steve is badly hurt, and during the ambulance ride, he tells Good Samaritan Frank all about Lisa, and makes Frank promise to go to Marilyn Hotchkiss’ academy at the appointed time, and tell Lisa he wanted to be there.

Like dance steps, this unabashedly old-fashioned film follows a certain pattern. At the school, there’s no Lisa, but Frank finds an array of characters in various degrees of discontentment: Meredith (Marisa Tomei), fragile and abused by her apparent boyfriend who turns out to be her violent stepbrother (Donnie Wahlberg); and Marilyn’s daughter, Marienne (Mary Steenburgen), pretending she is just covering for her mother until her return. The other characters, whose stories are three-dimensional and well intertwined, give Frank’s sentimental and clichéd journey from depression to acceptance a context and some weight. Some developments can be guessed well in advance, but most of the characters have depth, even those with a scene or two only. And the contrast between the innocent puppy love of the short film and the sadness of this film adds a bittersweet touch that overshadows the clichés. Roxana Ramirez
March 31, 2006