Watched: 02/20/2025
Format: Hallmark/ Amazon
Viewing: First
Director: Stefan Scaini
Job: Police detective
new skill: ballroom dancing
Man: Will Kemp
Job of Man: dance instructor
Goes to/ Returns to: Goes to Malta
Event: Dance competition
Food: cocktails
This movie is bonkers.
You will never follow the premise, because it is baffling and exists to making the central conceit of the title happen - that a detective will dance!
For reasons, The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango (2023) is shot in Malta, a place of which I am mostly uninformed, but makes Malta seem lovely, and I'd love to see it. It's modern, but retained its architecture, features old-world streets and buildings, and many pleasantly snoozing cats. But also because it's Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean, the sun is brutal and I pity the DP.
As a Maltese-shot film, a lot of the talent in the movie is local. All the characters sport very Anglo-sounding names while the actors mostly wrestle down a range of accents from Maltese, to multi-lingual-kinda-Spanish to Slovenian.
The film basically exists to exploit the fact that Will Kemp, one of the Hallmark A-Listers, has a background in dance. Lacey Chabert, who is the co-star, does not. Chabert and Kemp are both Executive Producers on this movie, and I cannot imagine what the business dealings at Hallmark are actually like, as this is also a Bristow produced movie, like the Safari movie we caught the other day. Globetrotters, these Bristows.
The set-up: a suave CEO dies suddenly - and while no one else sees it but us, the audience, we know he was poisoned by someone dressed as a ninja. It turns out he's the CEO of a company like the Arthur Murray Dance Company, which is actually global (I didn't realize Arthur Murray still existed until last year when I noticed a studio next to a restaurant where I sometimes meet my folks). So, this is high stakes! Someone is bumping off CEOs! Of dance!
Apparently this victim was the brother of a Senator or something, and so detective Constance Bailey (Chabert) of a metropolitan local police department somewhere in New York state is sent to Malta to work with Interpol. There, she's partnered with Will Kemp, who is in no way a law officer, but a bon vivant former movie performer who now runs around teaching dance classes to seniors.
But here is the thing - they don't *know* our victim was poisoned when Chabert is shipped over, just that he died. So I don't really get how it's a police case, but whatever.
Why is Chabert partnered with Kemp? Hang on here: It's because at the annual corporate retreat/ bash for the chain of dance schools, the executives are forced to come to an exotic locale and participate in a dance contest to win the favor of the CEO. And despite the fact he's dead, they're dancing anyway. THUS - to get inside the tight circle, Chabert is posing as a newly hired executive, and Kemp is undercover as her husband.
Yes, it is way over-complicated, as it suggests to the other execs that somehow Chabert has joined the executive team without anyone else's knowledge. However, no one seems to want to discuss business, so she's in the clear should THAT come up, like "hey, Lacey, what is your actual new job?". And by a remarkable stroke of luck, no one in the professional world of dance somehow recognizes Kemp's character.
So we get a sort of a locked-dance-contest mystery as Chabert and Kemp untangle motives and personas. Everyone has a reason to want the CEO dead, even if the reasons are petty and just suggest someone just needs a new line of work
Meanwhile, Chabert learns to embrace life and dance!
The cast is fine. And it's not "whomever is available in Vancouver this week". For example - the cop who is Chabert's Interpol contact is apparently a popular TV personality in Malta, so they were able to get quality local talent.
The biggest problem this movie has is that it sometimes forgets we shouldn't see more than what the detectives see.
True story - One summer in the early 1990's I went to see a play at Playhouse 1960 in Spring, Texas with my friend Mike. A bit of interactive fun, part of the play was figuring out "who did it" and submitting your answers during an intermission. Mike correctly identified the killer and won a prize.
When I asked Mike how he knew, because it was tricky and there were a lot of clues to sort through, he said "oh, I just looked at the dude's feet when he snuck across the stage under a blanket". And sometimes, it's that simple. And I confess, since that play, I always look at feet and whatnot if they *show* the murder taking place. Including in The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango.
Because the movie *shows* the murder take place, while the murderer is dressed like a ninja, only one person in the movie has that build. And it's pretty obvious from the first time you see the killer out of ninja-garb who has that build and who does not. So, maybe, don't show the murderer - or even the murder - in your whodunnit murder mystery? Or else make your suspects as uniform as the Robert Palmer girls.
Is it stupid? I mean, it knows it is and has fun with it. Unlike the Crossword Mysteries, it's a comedy. Kemp's character, in particular, seems to enjoy this nonsense as his dancer is a huge fan of mystery TV series. And Chabert plays the crusty, humorless detective and seems to enjoy that.
The plot makes no practical sense and has a dozen giant holes that seem like they didn't need to happen. But if you're worried about that, you DID sign up to watch something called The Dancing Detective: A Deadly Tango, and that's on you.
Some day we do need to talk about The Chabert Chuckle. She does this thing where she does a polite laugh, but once you hear it, you can't unhear it, and it's always an indicator that her character is trying to move things along. I assume she does this IRL.
The colon in the name of the movie suggests to me this is intended to maybe be a series. But it's unclear if Hallmark nerds liked it. A glance at Reddit says "not particularly". I'm guessing based on cost alone that an international dancing detective series is pretty unlikely. But Chabert does have that new exclusive contract...
No comments:
Post a Comment