Avoid. On the plus side the film used some genuine, well known salsa professionals, Susanna Montero and Yanet Fuentes. That, together with the genuine music, was good. Rashida Jones was great. But there were several elements which distractingly didn't sit right. First, unlike Strictly Come Dancing, there is no frilly shirt element in recreational salsa dancing (though there can be with professionals as with other dance). Nor fake tan! And the camp character was largely not funny and apparently there to provide the British comedy eccentric character. The core of the plot is Frost's character gave up salsa at 15 after being bullied at school for dancing. Not very believable. Even teenagers know Salsa is a great way to meet the opposite sex. And no easy way to put this but Frost is just too large to carry off the moves. He described the character as "a lump" on Graham Norton and he was trying to make a point that this shouldn't be a barrier but this was a problem. It's not that you have to be slim to dance, rhythm is unconnected to size. He clearly did have rhythm but he struggled to move with the ease and flexibility required. So his dance scenes are heavily edited and shot at angles to compensate for his lack of fluidity. And they had him wearing cycling gear and scruffy shorts to salsa. Wrong. They would have been better casting someone who could move with greater elegance and style. But worst of all, 9/10 of the jokes were plain unfunny. The film, which was pretty predictable, never really convinced, including Frost's re-finding himself. A real misfire.
Review of Cuban Fury
