Posted by Jim at March 9th, 2005

Recently Kristen and I have been watching a movie a week. This is a challenge since we have different tastes that sometimes overlap.

Shall We Dance is a Hollywood adaption of a Japanese movie. Whether or not it’s true to the original, I enjoyed it. That being said, it felt true to the original in the sense that there were points that it felt Japanese. What I mean by that is that there were certain sorts of characters and plot situations that I’m more familiar with in watching anime and reading manga than I am in watching your typical Hollywood movie.

Here’s the story: Every night John Clark (an estate lawyer) takes a train home from the office, and, every night he notices the same beautiful woman looking sadly out the same window. On one night, however, he gets off the train at the nearest stop, and, realizing she’s staring out the window of a dance studio, signs up for lessons.

Despite the fact that he’s married, this does not turn into an affair. He falls in love with the art form, and moves on to revitalizing other parts of his life.

I’d love to give a long list of why I suspect it’s close to the original, but I won’t for two reasons. First, because it will probably turn out that everything that feels like it should be original was added. Second, because it’d likely be a pretty poor read.

I’ll just mention a couple things that felt like they should be in the original. First, the fact that they had the main character see the woman through the window of a train in Chicago rather than having it happen through the window of a car. Second, many of the characters just did not feel Hollywood. Many of the characters were exceptionally quirky, most had secrets they desperately wanted to hide.

I should mention that I’ve got no interest in dancing, but I did like the movie. Kristen liked the movie too and kept talking about taking dancing lessons after it finished.

She’s likely to be disappointed on that front.