If you cut the extraneous parts of "Love n' Dancing" — you know, all the ones except for the dancing scenes — it might not be a half-bad movie.
Of course, it would also be about 30 minutes long, which doesn't exactly fulfill the requirements for a feature film.
The rest of this movie is a clunky romance tale with some of the most ridiculous dialogue and some of the worst performances in a recent memory.
The funny thing is, a lot of the people involved in it are show-business veterans.
Tom Malloy wrote the film and stars as Jake Mitchell, a hearing-impaired, swing-dancing champion who's experiencing a few difficulties in his personal and professional life.
Jake's long-time partner, both on and off the dance floor, is Corinne (Nicola Royston). She's decided to go solo, though, which has left him with a void in his life.
So now Jake is working as a dance teacher and a motivational speaker. That's how he met Jessica (Amy Smart), a one-time dance student who's been taking lessons from him.
Unfortunately, she's doing so for her impending nuptials. She's engaged to Kent (Billy Zane), a selfish Yuppie.
Director Robert Iscove probably should have been banned from filmmaking after foisting such duds as "Boys and Girls" and "From Justin to Kelly" on the movie-going public.
That the dance sequences are this competent is probably due to the efforts of Frank Byers, director of photography, and dance choreographer Robert Royston.
Iscove can't coax anything resembling professional work from his cast, though. Smart has never been more wooden. And you'd swear that Zane was deliberately trying to sabotage the film with his awful, over-the-top emoting.
(What are people like Caroline Rhea, Rachel Dratch, Betty White, Gregory Harrison and Catherine Mary Stewart doing in this? Did they wander onto the wrong movie set?)
"Love n' Dancing" is rated PG-13 and features some suggestive language and dance moves, some derogatory language and slurs, and scattered mild profanity (mostly religiously based). Running time: 95 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com