It is unfortunate when someone with a history of staging musical numbers and directing musical sequences can't make dialogue scenes flow.
Such is the unfortunate dilemma that "Love N' Dancing" finds itself in under Robert Iscove, whose resume includes choreographing the film "Jesus Christ Superstar" but also directing "From Justin to Kelly."
In other ways this swing-dancing romance emits an appealingly tender hum about the flush that comes when connecting with a new dance partner.
But apart from the sweetly corny vibe coming from Amy Smart's teacher-stuck-in-a-bad-relationship and writer-star Tom Malloy's hearing-impaired, broken-hearted dance teacher -- both of them accomplished at the quick-draw smile -- this is pretty unremarkable stuff that has little to excite outside of its nicely done twirl-and-dip sections, choreographed here by West Coast swing dancing guru Robert Royston.
The story's deaf angle is mildly interesting, especially the nifty idea that Billy Zane's jerky, workaholic fiancee acts as Malloy's character's literal opposite: using a Bluetooth like an anti-hearing aid (he just won't listen!).
But with by-the-numbers characters and a woefully predictable script, you'll mostly be tapping your feet as a waiting measure for the next time "Love N' Dancing" needs two people to step out on the floor.
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Robert Abele
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"Love N' Dancing." MPAA rating: PG-13 for some sexual references. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes. In general re-lease.
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'Mountain' a gripping tale
Like her terrific "In Between Days," a soulful first feature about the growing pains of a college-age immigrant to the United States, Korean American director So Yong Kim's second film, "Treeless Mountain," blends autobiography with fiction to probe an earlier, more devastating coming of age. Kim's camera binds us gently but tightly within the shattered world of two little Korean sisters, Jin and Bin, whose mother leaves them to try to reconcile with the feckless husband who abandoned her.
Left to the mercies of an intermittently drunk aunt (the excellent Mi Hyang Kim), the sisters cling to the half-truths with which they've been fobbed off, each imaginatively reinventing them in order to survive until their unassuming grandmother (played by a woman found in a rural farmer's market) restores form and function to their lives.
