One Last Dance
Patrick Swayze’s status as one of the coolest movie stars of all time is pretty much preserved for the ages, but as his career wore on into the late 90s, he sadly saw his stock as a movie star drop greatly and was forced to take roles in more lower budget b movies. This effort from 2003 was one of them, though it was more of a “passion project”, written, produced, directed, and co-starring his wife Lisa Niemi, and one could figure it offered a close look into the world of professional dance that he had risen so far from into the mainstream. Swayze plays a legendary dancer who had left the business but is lured back when his old dancing coach dies suddenly during a rehearsal and he is called upon to stage the piece that he had worked on years ago with him, but however this involves working again with an old flame of his (Niemi) who had suffered a massive emotional breakdown after the teacher had bawled her out during a practice and she had not heard from either him or Swayze since, along with another old dance pro (George De La Pena) who had been part of the original production. Naturally it isn’t long before the old wounds are reopened, and Swayze and Niemi are at odds with each other, mostly over the not too hard to guess secret surrounding her precocious daughter. The script (as well as Niemi’s acting) turns out to be dreadfully overwrought, as Niemi carries on her diva act for nearly the whole movie, busting Swayze’s balls and making the viewer (and everyone else) wonder just what the hell her problem is, because she doesn’t come across as someone with severe issues as she does someone who just doesn’t respond well to criticism. Swayze hangs in there though, even as his director wife dresses him up in some less than masculine outfits, and it takes all of his movie star charisma to enable the viewer to keep watching, as one realizes that the big reason Swayze’s career took off was probably because of his natural machismo that separated him from the pack in the often twinkie toed stylings of the males in this chosen field. Some may argue that the script was but a mere clothesline so that the real point of the film was to show off the dance skills of Swayze and the other pros involved in the project, but with little to no frame of reference to the dance routines themselves, it merely comes across as just showing off. While one can appreciate the discipline and physical conditioning that dancers must endure to stay in peak performance level, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a pretty tough sell for the average Joe who might have tuned in to watch the star of Road House do something different. Overall, while those involved in the professional dance business might enjoy this more than most, a fairly mundane, boring movie for just about anyone else…
5/10