by MATTHEW HAYS

I confess to being one of those critics who feels that Richard Gere is a wildly underrated actor. In the past few years, those of us who've made this argument have largely been proven true, due to a couple of very strong turns by the actor in Chicago and Unfaithful. Understated and intelligent, Gere's looks have often blinded people to the fact that he is indeed endowed with some talent as a performer.

Still, the actor doesn't always make great choices. And though Peter Chelsom's Shall We Dance? may have seemed like a great choice initially - the 1996 Japanese film was a massive international hit - the script should have indicated to Gere and his agent that the film would ultimately wallow in sentimentality.

Gere plays a successful but bored upper-class Manhattan executive. He has a perfect wife (the ever-fine Susan Sarandon) and two cute kids. Lovely house, lots of money, seemingly healthy work routine. In other words, a big-screen mid-life crisis just waiting to unfold.

On his way home on the subway one night, Gere looks out the window to see none other than Jennifer Lopez in the sky. And as it turns out, it wasn't her image on a billboard selling some low-quality product or hocking some nasty CD, but rather J.Lo- - again mysteriously cast as a working-class gal - this time sitting in the window of a ballroom dance school where she teaches. Drawn to her stunning aura, Gere enters the school and before anyone can scream "Flashdance" signs up for lessons.

Gere then proceeds to have an affair with the dance school itself, enthusiastically attending classes every week but never telling his family about them. He learns an important life lesson, too: that straight guys can actually get fulfillment from dance (who knew?). There are some sweet moments here, but too often they descend into groan-worthy maudlin territory. Will Gere and Lopez have an affair? What will Sarandon think when she learns of her husband's illicit two-stepping? Will their marriage survive now that Gere has revealed his new sensitive self? With filmmaking this insipid, only the banal will care.

Shall We Dance? opens Friday, Oct. 15

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