There's nothing more tiresome that watching dancers who are way past their prime trying to recapture a sense of their lost glory. This is what you'll be getting when you watch One Last Dance, a rather costly and pedestrian exercise in ballet melodrama. Full of unmitigated histrionics and rather ordinary dancing - particularly from the three leads - One Last Dance is pretty much a train wreck from beginning to end.
If viewers want to see some really good dancing they would be far better off tuning into You Think You Can Dance, Fox's current reality show - the dancers are young, and unlike Patrick Swayze, their not trying to fake it.
One Last Dance apparently took years to make the transition from idea to stage production to screenplay to screen and it was reportedly a labor of love for Swayze and professional dancer Lisa Niemi. But after seeing it I wondered why, during all those years, nobody stepped in and stopped them from doing any more damage to the world of dance.
The movie centers around three older dancers who are now retired. Travis (Swayze), Chrissa (Niemi), and Max (George De La Pena) are all former members of Alex McGrath's dance company. Through flashbacks it is gradually revealed that Alex treated the trio terribly, he was abusive and nasty, and his constant taunts eventually caused Chrissa to have some kind of mental breakdown.
The principals have now all gone their separate ways. Travis owns several fitness centers, Max gives seminars at schools, and Chrissa performs in a kind of vaudeville show where she's a model for a knife thrower! But Alex is now dead and the artistic director of the company decides to hunt the three out, hoping that they will reunite to bring to life the production they were working on when they decided to call it quits.
The three ex-dancers are all well into their forties, so reestablishing their former level of competency doesn't come to easy. After much panting and sweaty puffing, they manage to develop a semblance of what they once were. They even work on their basics and join and "adult beginners" class where the teacher is warm and supportive, encouraging everyone to find the "heart" in their dancing.
Of course, everyone is bringing back lots of emotional baggage. It is soon revealed that Chrissa has a young daughter whom she is reluctant to let dance. But could this little girl be Travis's? Chrissa also has a bad attitude problem - there are unresolved issues, which were probably to do with her breakdown and to Travis's betrayal of her. Travis decided he couldn't go on after Chrissa left the company, and now he's plagued by stiffness and injury, and Max is carrying abandonment issues.
There's lots of scenes involving angst-ridden confessionals and brooding shots of the actors against the New York City skyline. There's also lots of dance numbers, some of which are better than others. Watch for several younger members of the chorus who really stand out. But the sequences involving the three leads rapidly become corny and tedious, and they go on for far too long. Yes - we already get the point, they're forty and they can still tread the boards.
Will the three ever overcome their petty malice, spite, and neuroses and join together for one...last...dance? You have to wait a full 113 minutes to find out, but perhaps, by then, most viewers will have had enough and switched to Fox. Michael Leonard September 05.
