It's one of those rare movies that fell through every crack a movie could fall through.......no VHS, no DVD, no TV airings, no cable airings, no streaming availability in any venue........as if it never existed......
Therefore, BQ offers eternal thanks to whoever recently uploaded it on YouTube........
So.....is is that bad that it was buried so deeply out of sight?
Not at all. True enough, it's an embarrassing awful chunk of shameless romantic pandering from director John G. Avildson,. He desperately tried to duplicate the feel good, stand-up-and-cheer vibe of his previous film, the monumental Stallone-athon, "Rocky".
Everything that went right for Avildson in 'Rocky' went flying off the rails in 'Slow Dancing'.......the sentiment was forced and phony, the characters were either poorly written or not written at all......and one of the two leads was hopelessly out of her depth.
The unbelievable story involved an impossibly mis-matched romantic duo.......a garrulous, streetwise New York City human-interest columnist (Paul Sorvino, in full motormouth NYC mode) and a ethereal, ailing ballerina (Anne Ditchburn) who's teetering on the edge of total physical collapse.
A story this fairy-tale-ish would require two top notch actors to even come close to pulling it off. Sorvino certainly gives it everything he's got.........but Ditchburn, a gifted dancer, had no acting skills whatsover.......and she's just damn painful to watch.
Forget romantic chemistry.......these two people look like they wandered in from two different movies. The sappy, tone deaf script never bothers to create a real character out of the ballerina.......she's a lifeless prop for Sorvino to stand next to, spouting his Lovable Street Guy routines. His love for Ditchburn seems more like a 12 year old boy's infatuation with a wounded puppy.......
All of the awkward courting scenes lead up to the one part of the movie we got a kick out of, an unintentional howler of a climax. Meant to wring joyful tears out of an audience like the finale of 'Rocky', this windup elicits nothing but derisive snorts and giggles. (But we wouldn't have missed it for anything.....)
........which no doubt led the the movie's banishment to the wilderness of long forgotten films.
But we still celebrate its return from the nowhere-land because we think every movie should have a chance to be seen. 'Slow Dancing In The Big City', however misguided, was easily watchable........(and we've always been a sucker for romance, even a clunky one) 1 & 1/2 stars (* 1/2)
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