Big city transplant to Middle-of-Nowhere, USA? Check.
Angst ridden teen who has trouble with the locals? Check.
Said teen turns at least a portion of the town around with basically
good vibes ‘n shit? Check. So this one seems to check all the boxes…or
does it?!
Look I’m gonna cut right to it, this thing kinda
stinks. One of the bigger problems is
the movie doesn’t know what it wants to be.
Sometimes it’s a musical with choreographed dance numbers and sometimes
it’s a dramedy about teen life. This
indecision was a bit distracting and it’s really the famous warehouse dance
scene that’s the main culprit. It comes
out of fucking nowhere and makes no sense in any context. First of all it’s never setup that Ren (Kevin
Bacon (Wild Things)) is this virtuoso
dancer. He talks about how he’s into
dancing but at like clubs. It’s not
something he’s studied on a professional level (and apparently neither has
Bacon because his dancing double is way too damn obvious). But second, and maybe more importantly, the
film never has Ren or anyone else dance like this again for the duration. So what the fuck was that all about then? If Ren continued to dance in such a gifted
and practiced manner then I would be ok with it. But to have this solitary moment of Ren going
ballistic in an empty warehouse where he bounces off all the shit in there,
does a high bar routine and then the movie calmly walks away like it never
happened is exceptionally weird.
But you know, there’s something wrong with the whole picture. It feels as if someone today made an 80’s teen movie and got a lot of shit right like the clothing, the dialogue, many of the situations and etc, but the thing still doesn’t quite add up. Something’s clearly off that makes it feel like an imposter. I think it’s a combination of small things like the love interest’s disturbingly real death wish, we never find out why Ren and his mother move to this dusty small town which is a huge goddamn backstory element to leave out, the way they fucked up using the title song by playing it in full over the opening credits then using a snippet in the middle and then playing it in full again at the end when they should’ve saved it solely for the finale, and etc.
This is one of those movies where I don’t get why it’s
remained so popular over the years. Nothing
about it is particularly good guys. Of
the three big 80’s teen dance films Flashdance
is an incredibly boring pile of crap, Footloose
is maybe alight at best that has an almost fraudulent tinge to it, but nothing
is gonna beat the masterful Dirty Dancing. It’s not only a fun time it’s kinda one of
the best movies ever made. The other two
are just sorta dumb and pretty baffling as to how they got and sustained a
following.
If you gotta cut loose don’t Footloose, dig on some Purple
Rain instead.
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