STARRING
Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Danny Devito, Donnie Wahlberg, Sean Astin, Sonja Braga, Octavia Spencer
There is a purity of spirit and heart in Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School that hearkens back to a simpler, more straightforward place, a place that draws from emotional memories of growing up, with its scars and lost dreams. That’s a place where film doesn’t often venture during these cynical times, but that’s a shame because it is a locale where we sometimes experience our deepest feelings when a film evokes it well. Without question, Marilyn Hotchkiss reaches out and touches you deeply.
​
Robert Carlyle is Frank Keane, a baker by trade but now a man consumed by his wife’s death. When fate intervenes, he pulls over to help a stranger in a car wreck, a man near death (John Goodman) who urgently discloses a planned reunion, a meeting with a lost childhood love at a school for ballroom dance. So simply one man’s dream becomes another man’s destiny.
​
The film is directed with passion and an unerring delicate touch by veteran Randall Miller, whose vision started out as an award-winning short 15 years ago and has now blossomed into a beautifully sculpted comedy/drama which includes much of the original.
They have woven this tale of nostalgia and the process of grief, lost love and love found into a magical work not to missed.
–Geoffrey Gilmore, Director of the Sundance Film Festival
“Ballroom Bliss!
An extraordinary story rich and colorful.”
REX REED
New York Observer
