Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School (2006)
Average Rating: 4.7/10
Reviews Counted: 59
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 46
Clumsily staged and brimming with melodrama and trite self-help cliches, this dance movie stays stuck at amateur level.
Average Rating: 4.7/10
Critic Reviews: 23
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 18
Clumsily staged and brimming with melodrama and trite self-help cliches, this dance movie stays stuck at amateur level.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 4,882
My Rating
Movie Info
Randall Miller's Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School compiles an all-star cast to tell an unabashedly emotional story about life, love, and destiny. Robert Carlyle portrays Frank Keane, a man who has been in a deep depression ever since his wife passed away. One day while driving, Frank sees an accident. He investigates the scene to see if he can help and meets a dying stranger (John Goodman), who tells Frank that he was headed to a dance school in order to reunite with a woman he
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Cast
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Robert Carlyle
Frank Keane -
Marisa Tomei
Meredith Morrison -
Mary Steenburgen
Marianne Hotchkiss -
John Goodman
Steve Mills -
Sean Astin
Kip Kipling -
Danny DeVito
Booth -
Donnie Wahlberg
Randall Ipswitch -
David Paymer
Rafael Horowitz -
Camryn Manheim
Lisa Gobar -
Adam Arkin
Gabe DiFranco -
Sonia Braga
Tina -
Elden Henson
Sampson -
Ernie Hudson
Blake Rische -
Miguel Sandoval
Matthew Smith
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All Critics (62) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (47) | DVD (3)
Miller has all but smothered the charm right out of his Charm School.
Top CriticThe picture trivializes the characters, hinting at depths it can't depict, aiming at a profundity of feeling it can't begin to reach.
Beyond Wahlberg's deft moves, School's dancing is leaden, not charming, and the only challenge is enduring the film's lumbering progress until it finally clicks at the end.
Predictable and decidedly old-fashioned in its sensibility, the film is likely to win over audiences if not critics.
While it's at times too melodramatic and formulaic to be entirely successful, it still holds some appeal; its very amateurishness is what makes it charming.
Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School may stumble at times, but at least it gets out on the dance floor and has a good time.
Yet another ballroom dancing movie presents dance as a universal balm that heals life's problems in this mildly inspired dramatic comedy.
Why would Frank drop everything to embark on this lunatic mission? Well, the answer is simple. If he didn't, there would be no movie - and perhaps that wouldn't have been such a bad thing.
A surprisingly-moving message movie about love and redemption filled with sentimental and transformational moments leading to tearjerker of a finale.
A miscast hodgepodge of a genre stew.
That the film was itself borne out of risk invests its message with an honesty and an authenticity more than sufficient to offset its flaws.
Utterly charming.
Strong performances and moving themes are drowned in a sea of sentimentality.
I could believe almost nothing of this under-written, over-emoted saga.
the entire movie is ridiculous
This is a wildly ill-conceived jumble, and not even its impressive cast can rescue it.
There's dancing all right but not a whole lot of charm.
This is perhaps John Goodman's worst performance.
... slight and slurry, like a champagne buzz.
In this death-obsessed movie, the characters' lives flash before the audience's eyes - really, really slowly.
Clunky romantic comedy, which has the annoying habit of turning dead serious at exactly the wrong moment.
Not content to tell two lousy, maudlin stories at once, the movie goes for a full three.
The movie is so bad it brings up a question %u2014 what's the opposite of a comeback film?
Audience Reviews for Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School
Super Reviewer
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- Steve Mills: Swearing and making girls cry was the most important thing.
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- Randall Ipswitch: No matter what happened, we would meet on the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the new millennium at Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School.
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- Randall Ipswitch: With all due respect, it is painfully obvious that those 'professional' critics who have less than thoughtful words for this masterpiece have not at all lived a full life. As one who has loved and lost, held someone as they've faded into another existence; one who has suffered the passing of that one soul who is the meaning for their existence, as one who has both saved a life and taken one inadvertently, one who has found salvation in both a capsule and a career, found that the one-time bane of their existence has been their greatest teacher, and has survived to still view life on this earth as a wonderful gift... talk to me on your deathbed and try to choke out your same naive views.
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- Marianne Hotchkiss: Dance is a very powerful drug Mr. Keane. If embraced judiciously, it can exorcise demons, access deep seated emotions and color your life in joyous shades of brilliant magenta that you never knew existed. But, one must shoulder its challenges with intrepid countenance if one is ever to reap its rewards.
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