Minneapolis Shall We Dance

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Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Release Date: 05/07/2037
Running Time: 109 mins
Director: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Jerome Cowan
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Writer: Harold Buchman, Lee Loeb
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
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Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Shall We Dance

If this 1937 vehicle for Rogers and Astaire isn't as well-known or highly acclaimed as, say, Top Hat, it still testifies to the stellar quality of virtually all the films the pair made with RKO in the 1930s. And the surprising thing, especially for those haven't seen these films, is that the musical numbers are only half the fun. Made by veteran director Mark Sandrich (who also helmed four other Rogers and Astaire films), Shall We Dance skips along with such brisk comic energy that you don't even mind that its starring duo doesn't actually dance together until the halfway point. When they do, of course, it's amazing, their preternatural grace matched by Sandrich's fluid direction. The plot concerns the attempts of a ballet star (Astaire) to woo a popular dancer (Rogers) by, among other things, sailing across the Atlantic on the same ship she's on. But other than the myriad of (screwball) comic possibilities this narrative sets in motion, the central romance ends up being not all that interesting. Instead, one becomes fascinated by the elided but palpable undercurrent of desire that informs the banter between the pair's (male) managers--a relationship made all the more uncanny by the fact that one of the managers is played by Edward Everett Horton, narrator of the "Fractured Fairy Tales" segments from Rocky and Bullwinkle. (Derek Nystrom) — Derek Nystrom

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