Movies & TV / Reviews
Blast From The Past: Dirty Dancing
Image Credit: Vestron Pictures
Loading...All I do is watch movies, right?
Like… that’s not entirely true. I nap a lot. And lately the wife and I have been watching Dimension 20’s Fantasy High in my all-but-extinguished hope that I can get her into the idea of playing Dungeons and Dragons one day.
But the idea is that I watch a LOT of movies. I’ve seen one movie a day for the past 16 days, and I’m currently averaging over 20 movies per month. And I mostly try to watch are films I’ve never seen before. Because who wants to watch the same old flicks over and over again?
I mean… I do. I very much want to skip new movies sometimes and just watch a good old Friday The 13th.
But I eschew that desire and move onto my playlist instead! Or I check out what’s new on one of the many streaming services to which we subscribe. I want to watch as many movies as I can and really round out my cinematic world knowledge.
This frequently finds my having watched a film for the first time, excitedly telling others that I got around to it, and getting the inevitable “How have you never seen THAT before?”. Despite the fact that… man I’m trying! I watch so many, but I can’t have seen them all already!
This time? That happened to me over my first time viewing of today’s offering: Dirty Dancing.
Dirty Dancing is something of a recent-past period piece, as it was filmed and released in the 1980’s, but takes place in the 1960’s, due to having been an exaggerated accounting of the screenwriter’s childhood. I was unaware of that! I just assumed it took place in the 80’s and was a fictionalized tale, but… no. It’s akin to all the films coming out nowadays that relay stories from the 1990’s.
The movie is the story of “Baby” Houseman, a seventeen year old girl going on her annual summer trip to a resort for the rich and elite. She is filled with great purposes and a dream of joining The Peace Corps, and she intends to pass the summer away as innocuously as she can.
Instead, she finds herself falling in with the talent, the resort’s hired dance and entertainment troupe. She is quickly caught up in their lives and draws the eyes of Johnny Castle, the star of the lot. When Johnny’s dance partner finds out she is pregnant to one of the wait staff at the restaurant, Baby does everything she can to help out: from borrowing money from her father for a shady abortion, to offering to take the partner’s place in a routine off the resort.
From there, it’s the Jennifer Gray (Baby) and Patrick Swayze (Johnny) show, as he reluctantly takes her on as a student and dance partner. As the two of them train the days and nights away, however, something more powerful grows within each of them. Is it just a summer fling? Or is it the time of their lives? And what will Baby’s father think of all of it?
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ Sometimes you just need a sappy, cheerful, dancey, “all the good people win” ending to feel good about your day. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and this is now the second Swayze movie I find I could probably put on at any patch in my life and come away feeling better. The other, of course, is the delightfully positive and joyful To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar.
The movie ends in just an explosion of happiness and dancing, like an even better Footloose. With Johnny having been fired for his relationship with Baby coming to light–she reveals their time spent together to get him saved from an accusation of theft–he makes a triumphant return during the resort’s goodbye festival and dances the night away with Baby. Of course, their chemistry is so strong that soon EVERYONE is caught up in it, and everybody is dancing and thrilled with existence. It’s such a True Love (Plus Being Really Good At Dancing) Conquers All type of ordeal, but damn it… I loved every second of it.
+ Swayze was a fucking nova, guys. Gone far too soon. He just commanded a screen. Whether it was this or Ghost or Road House or whatever, he just showed up with his 10/10 good looks and his gigawatt smile and owned every camera pointed at him. He was the kind of sheer MOVIE STAR that people are talking about when they say we don’t have movie stars anymore; we just have actors.
Of course, to make this all about him would be to do a dishonor to Jennifer Gray, who is truly the movie’s protagonist. She is right there with Swayze, matching him all over the screen. She is adorably charming in Dirty Dancing, and she gets the most out of the few laugh lines there are in the screenplay. I did actually chuckle aloud a few times at her expressions and antics. As good as Swayze is as Johnny, she is an irreplaceable Baby.
– The age gap is icky! I mean… how old is Johnny supposed to be? 25? And Baby is 17. I know it’s an old movie set in an even older time, but still… that is a pretty substantial separation of ages for where they are. I’m not sure the movie ever puts an exact age on Johnny, but he has to be in his mid-20’s just based on his looks compared to Baby.
Again, I guess this is based on a real life experience, but still… I hope that whatever truth this is pulled from saw the real couple not be as gapped as these two are.
– Let’s be real: this is the story of Baby and Johnny. It’s THEIR tale. And to the movie’s credit, other characters–like Jerry Orbach playing Baby’s father–get some decent development. But there are a lot of other characters who don’t. Kelly Bishop played Baby’s mother, and she might as well not be in the script. Baby’s sister is even less relevant, and I do wonder why she was included at all. The ne’er-do-well waiter who impregnates Johnny’s partner, the rest of Johnny’s crew… they are all just window dressing around our protagonists. They don’t feel wholly realized or developed, and that’s a bit of a shame.
