Grade: B

Verdict: An entertaining movie with happy feet and a good heart.

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
Cox News Service

Some things were certainly lost in translation in the Hollywood-izing of the sublime 1996 Japanese film, "Shall We Dance?" Yet, surprisingly, the American remake of the same name is neither a disaster nor an embarrassment.

"Dance" can't possibly replicate the exquisite delicacy of the original, which is deeply rooted in the reticence and rigidity of Japanese culture. But overall, director Peter Chelsom's romantic comedy is a crowd-pleaser, with appealing performances by Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez.

Gere plays a successful Chicago estate attorney who, every evening on his commute home, glimpses an alluring, sad-eyed woman (Lopez) staring out the window of Miss Mitzi's dance studio. One night, he impulsively hops off the train, goes into her building and finds himself enrolled in Miss Mitzi's (Anita Gillette) beginners class for ballroom dancing. Yes, that ballroom dancing, the one with older women in sequins and chiffon and formally dressed men who suggest a either cheesy gigolos or Ricardo Montalban in his fine Corinthian leather stage.

Though an unspecified lust for Lopez gets him in the door, Gere's true passion becomes the dancing itself, which liberates something inchoate in himself. Meanwhile, his loving and lovely wife, Sarandon, worries he's having an affair.

Granted, Gere's classmates can come off as a collection of sitcom-ready cliches: the gentle doughnut-round hulk (Omar Benson Miller) who says he's taking lessons to impress his fiancee (nobody buys it); the macho blue-collar guy (Bobby Cannavale, so wonderful in "The Station Agent"), who protests a little too loudly about dancing with another man; and the brassy Bette-Midlerish broad (Lisa Ann Walter), the only woman in the class and the butt of far too many butt jokes. However, these are all strong actors, who give their characters warmth and credibility.

Channeling John Turturro's flamboyantly intense bowler in "The Big Lebowski," snake-hipped Stanley Tucci is very funny as Gere's fellow lawyer, a closeted ballroom-dancing aficionado who admits, "A straight man who likes to dance around in sequins walks a very lonely road."

Chesholm, who's directed one great film, the little-known British film "Funny Bones," and one very good one, the romantic "Serendipity," is a fine match for the material. He keeps the film light on its feet and ever-so-slightly off-balance, so it never devolves into the gooey overstatement that often occurs when Hollywood appropriates a popular foreign film.

The casting helps, too. Gere's self-deprecating charm works well in a part that demands a certain suspension of disbelief. He's supposed to be an ordinary guy with something missing in his life, and Gere has rarely seemed ordinary, even in ordinary movies.

Sarandon has little to do, but does well with whatever's there. Lopez/JLo/half-of-Bennifer/Jenny from the Block has an unexpectedly small role as one of the dance instructors. Yet she invests it with a clarity and quiet elegance rarely glimpsed in her movie work since 1998's "Out of Sight." The simplicity of her dance-class rehearsal clothes and her long ponytail enhance the effect. Oh, and she can really dance.