Miller brings a contradictory mix of jaded experience and naive sentimentality to the first truly personal filmmaking project he's undertaken since film school. That the feature incorporates nearly 20 minutes of footage from his original short is a sign that he hasn't given up his dream of telling real stories. That the remaining 80 minutes amounts to Chicken Soup for the Soul-style torture -- unless you like that kind of thing -- is a sign that maybe he should've taken a different turn at that proverbial fork in the road.

This sounds harsh, I know. At least Miller followed his heart while lesser filmmakers compromise and spend the rest of their careers taking paycheck projects. But his misguided attempt at sincerity yields little more than feel-good contrivance and cliché, poaching from countless other movies in a story assembled entirely from predictable surprises.

The movie begins with an Affair to Remember-style setup -- "I made an appointment almost 40 years ago, and I'm going to get there one way or another" -- only this time our lovers have agreed to reunite at Marilyn Hotchkiss' dance class, rather than atop the Empire State Building.

But fate intervenes and Steve Mills (John Goodman) suffers a gruesome car wreck en route to his dance date. Arriving at the scene is Frank Keane (Robert Carlyle), "a good man" who keeps Mills alive by interrogating him about the childhood love affair that happened way back in 1962, "when the gum in baseball cards still tasted good" and "McDonald's only had a million served."

Lines like these desperately want to endear the film to its audience. The entire project has a needy "like me" plaintiveness, and yet the more it tries to please, the more wearisome it becomes. Characters speak in florid, over-calculated phrases (such as Mary Steenburgen's "dance is a very powerful drug," "it can color your life in deep-seated shades of magenta" monologue), letting their dialogue hang in the air long enough for audiences to step out and get a cup of coffee.

At Mills' insistence, Keane goes to Marilyn Hotchkiss' dance class on the agreed upon night to find the long-lost Lisa Gobar. He dances a bit, then breaks down crying. Why? We'll never know. Miller likes to leave his questions unanswered, as if there's greater profundity in the cosmic mystery of it all.

How did Steve and Lisa ever drift apart in the first place? Why did grief-stricken Keane's wife commit suicide? And why does the Marisa Tomei character, whom he meets in class, have a false leg?

While we puzzle over such details, the movie keeps bouncing back and forth between the present, Mills' childhood memories (recycled from Miller's original short film) and the agonizing ambulance ride, in which our narrator teeters on the brink of death.

Charming? Hardly. With its woefully forlorn leading man, phony learning-to-live-again love story and not nearly enough dancing, this is one class you can afford to skip.

[as featured in The Miami Herald]