Loves Music, Loves To Dance (2001)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

"Loves Music, Loves to Dance" is another Sonny Grosso-produced TV movie based on a Mary Higgins Clark novel. This film was made in 2001 and has some familiar Canadian actors - Cynthia Preston, Dean McDermott and Alan Hall, to name three, and stars Patsy Kensit.Kensit is Darcy Scott, the producer of a trash-talk TV show, whose friend Erin (Preston) is doing a story for her on Internet dating. When she is murdered, Darcy is convinced the murder is committed by one of the men she dated and sets out to find the killer.These Clark TV movies are like accidents - you can't help but look. I watch all of them, even though they're not very good. This one, while full of holes (especially the first scene when a woman is murdered a few feet away from a big party and didn't scream her guts out), moves a little faster than some of the past adaptations. Kensit does a good job, and Preston, who played Faith Roscoe on General Hospital, is lively. Justin Louis plays the police detective assigned to the case.Mary Higgins Clark's agent, I'm assuming, could have sold these books to anyone. Why the Grosso-Jacobsen group was chosen is beyond me.

LOVES MUSIC LOVES TO DANCE is a good example not to make a murder mystery . From the outset we're , if not shown who the murderer is , then who it probably isn't . This means when we build up to a scene featuring a man like the dodgy handyman in the flat then the audience are fairly sure it's not him meaning the movie loses any suspense or tension This fundamental clumsy genre storytelling clearly manifests itself with the first murder . The victim Anne Sheridan is at a nighttime garden party where she meets the murderer . It's clear from the dialogue they both know each other well . " Are you all right " asks an out of view party goer . Anne replies yes then continues talking to the murderer who then goes on to to strangle her . This leads to all sorts of problems involving plausibility . Didn't the party goer see the murderer ? Why didn't Annne scream since the party is only a few yards away and since the murderer is an associate of Anne wouldn't he be questioned ? Even more unbelievable is that the audience know that the murderer has left his fingerprints at the scene . When you're watching a film and you're more knowledgeable about police procedures than the cops in the story you're know you're watching rubbish Patsy Kensit must have a really poor agent . She tried to swap a rather mediocre music career for a mediocre acting one but found herself starring in nonsense like BAD KARMA and this . That said LOVES MUSIC , LOVES TO DANCE is fairly amusing even if that wasn't the producers intention . The lifestyle of a murderer who is in to ballroom dancing with corpses isn't something you see everyday and does lead to laugh out loud moments

A serial killer has gone unnoticed for many years in New York City till the disappearance of a TV journalist working on Internet dating. He is suspected then to have killed seven women and the bodies disappeared and apparently the profiling of the murders that all had some important common points did not bring them together and attract the attention of the police. Then the story is well executed and designed and the final identity of the killer is not a total surprise but it is quite logically introduced in the film, the way he is introduced from the very start. But of course that kind of antagonistic presentation of the killer as the most innocent person possible, actually friendly and helpful, is naive because it has been used hundreds of times. But this film, even if it is not the detective story of the century that is going to get ten Oscars, is decent enough entertainment to be watched with some enjoyment.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

I have read most of Mary Higgins Clark's books and can't help but be interested in seeing how they are adapted to television. Loves Music, Loves To Dance was one of her weaker novels, and it results in a TV movie that is amongst one of the worst I have seen.The plot involves the murder of Darcy's best friend while doing a report on on-line dating. In order to solve the mystery, Darcy decides to also date each one of her friend's on-line pals to see which one of them might have something to do with the death. Sounds safe, huh? Darcy must be one of the most incompetent, air-headed heroines to ever grace a made-for-TV mystery. Some of her behaviours during the film's climax are so empty-headed and irrational your mouth will likely hang open in disbelief. And the method by which the killer's identity is discovered is also hard to fathom. A serial killer who has gotten away with murder for seven years would slip up like that? Well, obviously, because it's the only way our clueless heroine could discover the truth.Production values are also low, resulting in a movie that looks like it was made sometime in the mid 1980s. But as bad as this movie was, I somehow get the feeling I'll be watching further made-for-TV Mary Higgins Clark mysteries.