good back-story, and good acting

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

I was honestly surprised someone said Loves Music Loves to Dance was one of Clarke's weaker novels. I thought it was one of her best. The who done it cliffhanger was executed to perfection, there are plenty enough curveballs thrown to keep you guessing. The characters are much more believable and compelling.However, this movie was far inferior. Key characters who made the plot much more interesting were left out, most notably a couple of men who could have easily been the killer themselves, along with the man who it actually turns out to be. Its not nearly as obvious who the killer is in the book. Even many of the characters who were included were changed from the novel, sometimes in unappealing ways. Even the villain himself is far more compelling and far more dangerous in the novel.I won't go into all the differences between the novel and the movie, there is no room or time. But don't let this third rate film discourage you from reading the book if you haven't. Its much better. Pass the film up.All of Clarke's books with the possible exception of While My Pretty One Sleeps were done poorly on the screen. Its ashame because I feel all of them could have been good box office films in competent hands, including Loves Music Loves To Dance. I would like to see them redone someday by more competent directors and screenwriters. Doubt it though.

"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.

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.