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As Strictly Ballroom, Shall We Dance and Take the Lead have shown, no problem is so daunting it can't be solved with a little tango, rumba or meringue. So it proves in Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, a sentimental spin on this well-worn theme that combines a modern-day story of ballet-class love with a sappy rite-of-passage yarn culled from a short writer/director Randall Miller made 16 years ago. The broken-backed result may be a labour of love, but it's also pretty laboured.

At the instigation of a dying John Goodman, widowed baker Robert Carlyle goes to the titular dance academy to deliver a message to his long-lost love. Said woman is nowhere to be seen, though that doesn't stop our grieving hero finding a soulmate in Marisa Tomei's wounded divorcee.

"LACKS CREDIBILITY AND COHERENCE"

All well and good, but Miller complicates proceedings by continually returning to the expiring Goodman and, via his narration, his earlier version of the material. Not only does its scratchy naïveté clash visibly with the rest of the movie; it also necessitates a protracted death scene that becomes more and more comical the longer it lasts. You really have to wonder what Miller and his writing partner Jody Savin were thinking, as whatever economical benefits reaped from this bizarre recycling cost the film dear in credibility and coherence. A pity really, as the fine cast, which includes Mary Steenburgen as a mannered dance instructor, Donnie Wahlberg as a hot-tempered student and Danny DeVito as a jovial jailbird, undoubtedly deserve better.