![]() ![]() It has been mined, remade, and reimagined in the form of a short-lived scripted series starring Melora Hardin, a stage musical, and 2004’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. To be fair, 1987’s Dirty Dancing is hardly sacrosanct material. Now, repeat after me: You’ve NEVER felt this way before. “You will have the time of your life,” it keeps insisting, “as long as you ignore the fact that these are different actors and all the great music from the original has been translated into watered-down contemporary cover songs. Though there have been some additions and changes to the plot, mostly involving peripheral characters like Baby’s sister, Lisa (played here by Modern Family’s Sarah Hyland), and her parents (Debra Messing, taking over the role once occupied by Kelly Bishop, and Bruce Greenwood as the doctor patriarch originated by Jerry Orbach), Dirty Dancing 2017 is more or less a beat-for-beat retread of a more enjoyable movie. I guess I could have a snack.”Īcross the board, the liveliness levels stay stuck on low, perhaps because everyone involved can sense they’re going through motions previously established and perfected 30 years ago. At best, their eyes are saying, “Eh, I don’t know. For starters, Breslin, who plays Baby, and newcomer Colt Prattes, daring to step into Swayze’s cha-cha-ing shoes, don’t generate anything close to the Grey-Swayze sizzle factor. That said, Dirty Dancing, the new TV movie remake starring Abigail Breslin that airs Wednesday night on ABC, will probably not be perfect for you, or anyone else for that matter. If you were an impressionable teenager raised on early MTV music videos and prepared to believe that a chance watermelon-holding incident could lead to romance with Darry from The Outsiders, Dirty Dancing was the perfect movie for you. The dance scenes - from the first bump and grind to “Love Man” by Otis Redding to the rehearsal montage set to “Hungry Eyes” - crackle, seduce, and often do both. Swayze and co-star Jennifer Grey famously didn’t always get along, but they had tremendous chemistry and played their characters, Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman, with fire and passion. What elevates Dirty Dancing and makes it a dance-movie classic is its undeniable energy. I keep coming back to it not only because of Patrick Swayze’s swiveling hips (though they help) or because, for a while there, it was on cable every 15 minutes (that helped, too). I have no idea how many times I’ve seen Dirty Dancing (40? 50? 802?). It is, however, an irresistible, fun, eminently rewatchable film. It’s predictable, and the dialogue is stilted at times, and its portrait of “nice” privileged people (the Housemans) versus evil richies (Robbie the waiter) versus “the lower class” (the dancers at Kellerman’s) lacks nuance, although that was true about pretty much every movie released in the ’80s. Dirty Dancing - the 1987 sleeper hit that convinced a generation that true love involves practicing the lift in a lake and sexy lip-synching to Mickey & Sylvia - is, technically, not a great movie. ![]()
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