Slow Dancing In The Big City (1978)

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I saw this movie when it first came out (1978). It was a catastrophe -- critically and commercially -- at that time and time has not been kind to it. It's a mark of how badly it failed that it never was even released for VIDEO, let alone DVD, despite the director (John Avildson of "Rocky" fame), Paul Sorvino and someother good character actors.Sorvino plays a NYC journalist who seems roughly modeled on TV's Columbo --he's scruffy, middle-aged and babbles on and on in a way that I think is meant to be eccentric and charming, but actually comes off as purely annoying. He's an "everyman" figure who falls in love with a seriously ill ballerina. I wonder where the concept of the ballerina as the supreme symbol of femininity comes from -- real life ballet dancers are ATHELETES, not simpering fashion models andinjury and disability go hand-in-hand with their art form -- but here it is handled in the lamest and most embarrassing way imaginable.Anne Ditchburn (Sarah), a real life Canadian dancer who never acted before (or again and you can understand why) has the world's strangest medical condition -- it's something vaguely inexplicable that has to do with her...uh...groin. Or maybe more accurately her thigh muscles, I don't know. We aren't told much, but she's clearly in a lot of pain when she dances, and her dancing bizarrelyincludes a lot of splits and arabesques and stuff where she wraps her thighsaround other dancers. So it hurts. She needs some kind of operation but thenshe probably won't be able to dance -- not this thigh wrapping stuff anyways -- so she is soldering on through the pain.That's about it for the plot. She insists on dancing in the "big performance" she is scheduled for, despite the pain, and along the way falls in love (veryimprobably) with big, beefy, talkative Paul Sorvino. Now, I want to say that I generally LOVE off-beat romances with oddball characters ("Harold and Maude"is about my favorite movie of all time) and that's probably why I went to see "Slow Dancing" originally.But the concept just curls up and suffers a slow death in this badly written, badly directed and badly acted film. There is no chemistry at all between Sorvino and Ditchburn. He really does seem to old for her and the contrast between her tiny, fit body and his big paunchy one is just awkward and even grotesque. There are no actual sex scenes, but you can't help thinking in your mind what they would look like together and...it would be pretty gross.The worst of it is that Sarah's medical condition (the...uh...groin problem) can't help but have sexual connotations, although none are mentioned, because theexact part of her body affected would be directly involved in sexual intercourse. You keep thinking "hmmm...he's really a big guy, and she's a tiny little thing who can't open her legs..." and any hope that the movie will be seen as touching or moving or whatever without making you break into helpless laughter is totally lost.Surely this can't have been the effect the director or screenwriters were going for -- the movie plays as if it's meant to be a quirky but deeply moving romance. Why oh why didn't they make her injury something less awkward, like arthritic knees or a foot injury (far more common amongst dancers and very believable)? Almost any other medical problem would have worked better here.Like the video companies who had no interest in putting this film on tape, I am puzzled as to who the heck would ever want to view this. Maybe a die hard Paul Sorvino fan? I can't honestly recommend this to anybody else, unless you are a film student wanting a case study example of WHAT NOT TO DO when makinga movie....

When you read about this film you wanna cringe. I have seen it countless times and yet I cringe myself! So what is the attraction here? I think that for me, it's the offbeatness of the romance. I find it super refreshing to have an oddball coupling between this NYC Jimmy-Breslin-like columnist and a down-on-her-luck (health-wise) ballerina. You feel embarrassed for Paul Sorvino at his unsubtle approach to wooing this woman. Like the guy in the bar who can't take a hint. He's a bit overweight (at least as a would-be suitor for a ballerina. Hope that doesn't sound unkind) and possibly a tad too old for her. Nice change of pace from Greek God wooing Super-model. The Bill Conti score has stuck in my head all these years later, which is a pretty good sign. However some of the acting is just dreadful. A subplot involving a young Puerto-Rican boy befriended by Sorvino's character is just hilariously bad. But the opening scene where Ditchburn is warming up to Carole King draws you right into this story. Good luck finding it. You'd think that Lifetime would be re-airing this or even WE, but I haven't seen it on in quite a few years.

I only saw this movie once as a teenager when we had "ON" pay television (before SelectTV, and then inevitably, cable). It was the last showing and I stayed up until 2 am to watch it.Needless to say, after all these years it has stuck in my mind. I loved Paul Sorvino as the lonely, heart of gold newspaper guy and Anne Ditchburn as the vulnerable ballerina. In my minds eye I remember it as a quietly executed romantic film. This is one to watch on a rainy day curled up in a blanket with a cup of tea.After my first and only viewing I had hoped to see it again, and waited patiently, looking for a listing in the TV guide week after week.Unfortunately, after approximately 20 years I am still waiting. I sincerely wish that they would re-release this film again. Perfect for die hard romantics.

This is a wonderful movie. I've only seen it twice, and I've been looking for it again for ever. I'd buy it if I could find it. While it's sad, it shows three things -- how much a man can love a woman, how hard some people want something and how hard people work to overcome their limitations.