But the movie has a great deal of zest and charm, and Yakusho gets so exactly that crest of melancholy that is a man’s early 40s, until he decides to go for another kind of life, that the movie is infinitely touching.Read Full Review »
88
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert
One of the more completely entertaining movies I've seen in a while--a well-crafted character study that, like a Hollywood movie with a skillful script, manipulates us but makes us like it.Read Full Review »
83
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Owen Gleiberman
Even when the catharsis we yearn for arrives, it's tinged with restraint. But then, the true romance in Shall We Dance? is more than personal. It's the spectacle of a nation learning to dance with itself.Read Full Review »
80
The New York Times: Elvis Mitchell
And the dancing, as in ''Strictly Ballroom,'' is filmed with a wishful Fred-and-Ginger sweetness that gives the film a studiously effervescent mood.Read Full Review »
75
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert
Conventional as it may be, Shall We Dance? offers genuine delights. The fact that Paulina is uninterested in romance with John comes as sort of a relief, freeing the story to be about something other than the inexorable collision of their genitals.Read Full Review »
75
Philadelphia Inquirer: Carrie Rickey
The new film compensates with Gere's wry performance as a man who lacks for nothing material but hungers for something spiritual. Even better is Stanley Tucci's delirious turn as Gere's balding, button-down colleague.Read Full Review »
75
Boston Globe: Wesley Morris
Gere is a pleasure, smiling and spinning and high-fiving his two classmates -- played by Bobby Cannavale and Omar Miller -- and the movie is happy and extremely likable.Read Full Review »
75
ReelViews: James Berardinelli
This is a film for anyone who prefers to leave the theater smiling.Read Full Review »
70
Washington Post: Stephen Hunter
As glossy and overproduced as the thing is, it's a GOOD Big Stupid American movie.Read Full Review »
70
Time: Richard Corliss
The film has such a weakness for the easy incongruity (short men dancing with tall women--isn't that hilarious?) that it could almost be Australian. But Shall We Dance? also has an emotional gravity; it is grounded in a middle-aged man's nagging belief that he has one last chance to grab at life. [16 June 1997, p.76]Read Full Review »
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