'Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing' takes some odd steps

There is an art to selecting movie titles, as Randall Miller well understands. This director/co-writer calls his first feature Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, a title that suggests a good-time movie slathered with whimsy.

Mind you, he could have called it Potentially Fatal Car Accident and Grief Support Group Film and been just as accurate, but surely that would have cut his box office by a significant amount.

Samuel Goldwyn Films 'Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School' B- The verdict: Far-fetched, but evocative yarn about starting over, plus dance and an auto accident. Director: Randall M. Miller Starring: Robert Carlyle, Marisa Tomei, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, John Goodman, Danny DeVito, Donnie Wahlberg Run time: 103 minutes Release date: March 31, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for mature situations, language. See showtimes Blast from the past Portraying a dance teacher was just a trip back to her childhood for actress Mary Steenburgen. On the web Official movie site Rate 'Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

This quirky, not always convincing, but ultimately successful film does draw on the transformative-power-of-dance movies (Shall We Dance?, Mad Hot Ballroom) as well as the group-therapy-to-help-us-start-living-again flicks (Boynton Beach Club) and merges them into a whole loaded with peculiar touches. This is a film you are likely to either buy into and find moving or stay outside of its emotional pull and walk away indifferent to it.

If much of it feels familiar, and it does, at least Miller cannot be accused of cribbing from any of the films mentioned above. The reason: This feature-length movie is the expansion of a short he made more than 15 years ago. Miller is nothing if not persistent, and there is evidence of much more here, including some valuable storytelling talent.

Although we do not know it for a while, baker Frank Keane has lost his wife to suicide and remains in a bereavement fog after an unspecified amount of time. When we first see him, he is driving his truck, delivering the day's bread. Then Frank is passed on the road by a guy we will learn is named Steve Mills (John Goodman), who gets involved in a bloody one-car crash further down the road. Frank is the first to find Steve, pinned behind his steering wheel and in desperate need of medical attention.

But first, Steve tells Frank at length about his childhood spent learning the box step and other social graces from an old biddy called Marilyn Hotchkiss. There he met a girl named Lisa and was so smitten with her that the two of them made a pact to meet in Marilyn's class on the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the new millennium. Naturally, that is where Steve was headed and he presses an invitation into Frank's hand and exacts a promise that he will attend and explain to Lisa why he has been delayed.

Frank goes, does not find Lisa, but does meet Meredith (Marisa Tomei), a one-legged travel agent — Hey, you were warned about the high quirk quotient — who is frequently hassled by her overprotective, violence-prone brother, Randall (Donnie Wahlberg).

With all that established, the film bounces about between the dance class — now overseen by Marilyn's self-dramatizing daughter Marienne (Mary Steenburgen) — Frank's grief group, the dance class of 40 years ago, full of adorable, awkward kids, and the scene of the car crash.

Miller and his co-writer Jody Savin give Steenburgen some over-the-top monologues to deliver to her class about dance as a powerful drug that can "exorcise demons, access deep-seated emotions and color your life in joyous shades of magenta." Oh, just go along with it.

Robert Carlyle, who did very different dancing in The Full Monty, wears his grief openly and is a strong magnet for our empathy. Goodman acts even more broadly than usual, Wahlberg's character is wildly inconsistent and Tomei remains the least interesting actress to ever win an Oscar.

Still, there is something evocative about Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, unless of course you do not believe it in the least.