Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

This film does other power-of-dance movies one better by downplaying the dancing and underscoring what its brethren often lack: a compelling, wrenching and wonderfully inspiring story.

I wish I could say there is something pleasurable in watching John Goodman reminisce about the good old days while impaled on a steering wheel in the Volvo he's crashed on a California freeway, but I can't find what it is.

Too cute, too transparent, too precious and ultimately too much.

The film is an elegiac journey to a sweeter, more civilized place in the heart. Predictable and decidedly old-fashioned in its sensibility, the film is likely to win over audiences if not critics.

This has its moments, but most of these are engulfed by the overall murk.

It's all a treacly, shoddily assembled, underwritten mess.

Juggles three separate time periods -- and is completely formulaic in each one.