Love N' Dancing (2009)

Love N’ Dancing: Directed by Robert Iscove. With Nicola Royston, Brandi Tobias, Brian Lucero, Tom Malloy. 2002: Jake Mitchell is the defending World West Coast Swing Champion. He’s got everything going for him: looks, personality, and style. He’s at the top of his game when he and his partner Corinne are crowned the unexpected winners at the World Swing Dance Championships. As the crowd cheers and the celebration begins, Jake appears uneasy. Did he really deserve to win? The music blasts and the bass is thumping, and Jake hears none of it. He feels it. Jake is completely deaf, due to an ear infection when he was a teenager. He learned how to dance by feeling the vibrations of the music. Now he feels something else: that perhaps the judges gave him the win out of sympathy. Present Day: Jessica Donovan’s life is boring. When she was younger, she was a dancer who had dreams of Broadway. Now she’s an English teacher for disinterested, upper class middle school kids, and she’s dying to let loose. Her fiancee Kent is a work-a-holic who cares more about making money than making Jessica happy. Jake’s moved on with his life and he’s now a dance teacher who travels around the country doing motivational speaking to students about how his disability did not hold him back. It’s at a school assembly where Jake and Jessica first meet. He’s up on stage telling kids that you have to believe in yourself. The spoiled rich kids show no interest at first, but Jake’s charm and sense of humor gets them to laugh. Then his former partner Corinne joins him onstage and they dance. The crowd goes nuts! Jake meets Jessica and there’s an instant connection; there’s only one problem. Jake’s still in love with Corinne and perhaps always will be. And Corinne knows exactly how to get under Jake’s skin. Though she has a fiancee, she drives Jake nuts with her flirtatious ways. Jessica initially asks Jake to train both her and her fiancee in West Coast Swing for their wedding, but Jake and Jessica are drawn closer when Kent’s non-stop job prevents him from going to the class. Jessica decides to take lessons from Jake… perhaps they can compete at the World Championships of Swing in the Pro-Am division? And they get better and better. They decide, at a dance party, to go for it all. Forget the Pro-Am; they want to try for the title that Jake felt he never deserved. But now the champions are all 18 year olds who can defy gravity, and Jake’s in his early thirties. To make matters worse, Corinne gets word that her old partner has a new partner, and suddenly, she’s interested in Jake again. Jake and Jessica must try to elude all obstacles, romantic or otherwise, to stay focused on the goal… winning the World Title and winning each other. Will they give in to the pressure or come out like champs?

“forget the story (this kind of plot was filmed a thousand times before), forget the dancing (those who watch the movie because of it will judge by different parameters than I do), forget the lame camera-work and generic music – this is about dialogue and acting! I am actually thinking, the whole film is a parody about how special interest movies are made. the guy is deaf, but a dancer. so far so good. his former girlfriend is trying to win him back in a hilariously overacted 40u0026#39;s-femme-fatale-manner, while both of them look as imbecile as it gets. amy smart is admittedly a much nicer sight, but she peaks the top of her acting abilities with her performance of a stressed teacher (the students seem nice though, albeit a bit bored, which is understandable) having kind of an inner outbreak in the classroom, screaming and nearly dancing at the same time. I nearly fell off the sofa at that point. and when she came into the club, saying u0026quot;wow, I can feel the energy!u0026quot;, I actually did. billy zaneu0026#39;s stammering and overacting was also annoying and entertaining at the same time; like everybody else he was obviously left totally on his own (and to the unwillingly funny script) by the director, who seemed to have put all his efforts into the dancing scenes, and left the rest of the movie to his friends and family. not a very wise decision, if you ask me. so: one star for the dancing, one for the funny moments (if not on purpose), and one for the chuzpe to call this thing a movie. three altogether, and thatu0026#39;s more than fair.”