Peter Chelsom’s Shall We Dance? (Miramax, 10.15) is not a Richard Gere-Jennifer Lopez romance-on-a-dance-floor movie. It’s a Chelsom-esque ensemble piece a la Hear My Song. It’s Gere, Stanley Tucci, Lisa Ann Walter, The Station Agent‘s Bobby Cannavale, Anita Gillette, Richard Jenkins…they’re all in it together. Lopez plays an intriguing but essentially support-level character for the first hour…no character deepening, no romantic intrigues with Gere, nothing. Then she and Gere start paying attention to each other at the start of the second hour…but they don’t become the movie. (Was her screen time reduced, as it was in Jersey Girl, when Miramax realized that her Bennifer-generated negatives were going through the roof?) Gere’s performance as an estate lawyer nursing a secret passion for after-dark ballroom dancing is assured and charismatic, and he gives off genuine dignity and delight when he dances — you can see it really turns him on. Tucci is a total live wire as Gere’s fellow office worker who’s also a nocturnal ballroomer. He’s so good you wish he had more scenes. (He did, actually, but they had to be sacrificed.) Pic was shot in Winnipeg, and Manitoba-native Len Cariou played Richard Gere’s boss, but his entire role ended up on the cutting room floor….too bad.

Can anyone see the logic in Miramax publicists restricting invites to press screenings of Shall We Dance? in the face of a massive sneak preview showing in theatres coast to coast last night (i.e., Saturday, 9.25)? Especially considering that the film is frequently heartening and spirit-lifting and is obviously going to win over the just-entertain-us crowd? It may not have critics doing cartwheels, but I’m a hard-ass and I had very few problems with it.

The latest title of that currently filming not-really-a-sequel-to-The Graduate romantic comedy under director Rob Reiner is (drum roll…) Rumor Has It. (Not a bad title. It was previously called Otherwise Engaged, which I also like.) As soon as he was hired in mid-August to replace director Ted Griffin on the Jennifer Aniston-Kevin Costner-Mark Ruffalo film, Reiner brought in North co-writer Andrew Scheinman to do a page-one rewrite of Griffin’s script. Scheinman, producer of several Reiner-directed films from The Sure Thing (’85) to Ghosts of Mississippi (’96), is apparently co-writing with his brother Danny, whose IMDB resume includes only acting jobs. Most of Griffin’s script has been wiped off the hard drive. The new script still uses the basic premise (Aniston’s relationship and/or impending marriage to Ruffalo is put on hold while she explores her identity and that of her grandmother, played by Shirley Maclaine, who was apparently the real-life model for the Mrs. Robinson character), but this is just being used as “a way in” to the new script and new sensibility, which is totally Reiner-Scheinman’s.