'Shall We Dance?' makes the right moves

"Shall We Dance?" makes the move from Tokyo to Chicago with the deftness of Fred Astaire leading Ginger Rogers. In Masayuki Suo's 1996 version, a Tokyo office manager who's hit a bored and dissatisfied passage in his life catches a glimpse of a beautiful young woman peering somberly out a window of a ballroom dancing school as his commuter train whisks by. So transfixed is he by this vision of loveliness that he signs up for lessons at the school.

The very same thing happens to Richard Gere's John Clark, a successful lawyer, when he takes his regular train ride to his home in the suburbs one evening and spots Jennifer Lopez's Paulina looking out a window in Miss Mitzi's Ballroom Dancing School.

Clark is a great deal more successful than his Japanese counterpart, and he has a wonderful wife in Susan Sarandon's Beverly, a department store executive. The Clarks have been married 19 years, have two terrific teen-aged children and a tastefully expensive home. As settled as he is in a good life, Clark is beginning to feel a bit trapped in a routine existence.

As class begins, Paulina makes it clear that John is not going to get anywhere with her. She is a dedicated professional ballroom dancer who has suffered a career setback and is determined to make a comeback. A gentleman who might well not have betrayed his wife even if tempted, John accepts Paulina's declaration and gets on with the weekly Wednesday evening lessons. Anyone who has seen "Chicago" will know that Gere will soon transform John, a far more assured and polished man than the Japanese office manager, into a ballroom sensation.

John is the centerpiece of an appealing ensemble. At the school he discovers that his longtime office colleague (Stanley Tucci) is a bewigged closet tango wizard, and his fellow novices are an amiable giant (Omar Benson Miller) and a slick dude (Bobby Cannavale). Keeping things lively is Lisa Ann Walter's Bobbie, a curvaceous, painfully blunt but highly gifted dancer. Broadway veteran Anita Gillette is the warm-hearted and wise Miss Mitzi, a retired ballroom dancer.

"Shall We Dance?" is a sleek Hollywood crowd-pleaser, more movie than art film, but its makers have wisely stuck not only to the spirit but often even to the letter of the original. Writer Audrey Wells and director Peter Chelsom, fondly remembered for "Hear My Song," have understood well that transposing the story from Japan to America involved not tinkering with plot and characterization as much as maneuvering a cultural shift.