Now follow this timeline: Mia had been dating the creepy owner of the dance studio. But it's Armando who visits her in the hospital, while the creep begs off over the phone; he's been "too busy" to come and see her. We get the impression that only two weeks have passed since the accident.
One night while taking out the restaurant garbage, Armando catches sight of a trash can on wheels, and something about the way they pivot together inspires him to perform a pas de deux right there in the alley. Inspiration hits. He shows Mia videos of wheelchair ballroom dancers and starts a class to teach it in Mia's hospital. He recruits such fellow patients as a wounded soldier, a busty transgendered woman and a hard-boiled goth girl, and finally Mia also attends. It turns out that New York's first wheelchair ballroom dancing competition is in three months and…
It's unlikely that anyone paralyzed from the waist down is going to be taking ballroom dancing classes a few weeks later. The physical and mental trauma would make it impossible. Why am I telling you this? You already assumed as much, didn't you? So let's back way up and bring the movie into focus in a different way. It isn't a docudrama. It's an escapist fantasy. It uses a group of identikit stereotypes in a formula story.
One is Isabella, Armando's Puerto Rican mother (Priscilla Lopez), who has a neighborhood beauty all lined up for him to marry and wants grandchildren and lots of 'em. Then there are Mia's rich WASP parents, eager to have her move back home with them; they'll have the house outfitted with ramps. Chantelle (Laverne Cox), the transgendered woman, falls in love with one of Armando's older Puerto Rican relatives. This clicks in another set of stereotypes: The man allegedly has no idea Chantelle has a little something extra, although it is the least-kept secret in the hospital. Chantelle never gets around to telling him and oops! They truly fall in love, although he's not exactly her type, even if she wasn't in a chair. Love conquers all.
These implausibilities are ignored by the movie. It knows that with characters we like, we want good things to happen to them. We know who we're cheering for in the dance competition. I saw "Musical Chairs" with a registered nurse who cared for me at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, and she loved it. It was life-affirming, she said. If anyone knew at first hand how inaccurate it was, she knew. But she didn't mind. Neither to a degree did I. That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.
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