Film review by Steve Bennett

And Nick Frost’s latest, Cuban Fury, differentiates from that proven formula not one jot.

Here he plays Bruce Garrett, who was a schoolboy Latin dance champion until bullies inflicted a humiliation that cost him his confidence, and he quit. Fast forward 25 years, and he’s working in a dead-end job in an engineering company, living an isolated life. Until, that is, the gorgeous new female boss comes along – Raschid Jones – and he decides to get back in the game to win her heart.

Fortunately, he happens to have kept a pair of one-and-three-quarter-inch heels from his dancing days (adult-sized, conveniently and inexplicably) and tracks down his old teacher to revive that magic.

Salsa, we’re told, comes from the heart and not from the feet – but sadly this film is lacking that primal passion. Even if Frost did spend seven hours a day for seven months to get the moves right, the script, warm-hearted though it is, seems to have been dashed off rather more quickly.

Act one varies from the slow-moving to the unpleasant. Chris O’Dowd plays his co-worker and romantic rival, but woefully miscast as an egotistical bully with an unpleasant line in describing just what he’d like to do to Jones. Frost’s mates, supposedly sympathetic, are nor much better in their urging him to grasp the nettle and ask her out. ‘She’s a ten and I’m a two,’ Frost protests in one of the film’s few stand-out lines, all of which are in the trailer. ‘It would be like a butterfly going our with a parsnip.’

His life, and the film, picks up when he goes back to the dancing classes, not least because we meet the two best performances of the movie: Ian McShane as a sort of grizzled, alcoholic, grumpy and Cockney Mr Miyagi (who deserves much more screen time ) and Kayvan Novak, stealing the whole movie as a big gay stereotype, who makes the screen sparkle like a thousand glitterballs every time he’s glimpsed on it.

Weeks of training later and Frost has his dancing mojo back... though his sister and childhood dance partner, engagingly played by star-du-jour Olivia Coleman, somehow seems to remember how to bust a move without any such soul-searching lessons.

By the time we’re here, the heavy-footed script and gossamer-thin characters have picked up a little Latin soul, helped no end by the joyously upbeat soundtrack you’d expect. And through amiability alone, Cuban Fury becomes an enjoyable bit of fluff, occasionally enlivened by a funny scene.

But director James Griffiths, making his big-screen debut after working on the likes of Episodes, is no Edgar Wright. That’s who Frost really needs to get together with, not the winsome Miss Jones.

• Cuban Fury is in cinemas from Friday.

Review date: 11 Feb 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett