A modern dance movie that stacks up well with the classics, in spite of cheesiness and overreach

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2014)

When did dance movies get so serious? When Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made them they were essentially comedies, with just a touch of melodrama to move the romantic plot lines forward. But by the time of 1977's "Saturday Night Fever" and 1987's "Dirty Dancing," dance had become a framework for commentary about heavy topics like rape and abortion. It is arguable whether audiences really noticed; decades afterward "Saturday Night Fever" is famous primarily for its time capsule soundtrack and John Travolta's white-suited disco pose, while "Dirty Dancing" remains alive in the collective memory for one famous line of dialogue and for the slick moves that Patrick Swayze showed off and later parodied on Saturday Night Live.
Yet to understand the non-dance bits of these movies, it helps to be familiar with the periods in which they were made. In the case of "Dirty Dancing," it is helpful also to know something about the time in which it is set: the early 1960s, the brink of a major generational divide. Despite Jennifer Grey's clothes and hair, a few of the song choices, and the fact that the font and color of the title look like they come straight off a Prince album, this movie is consciously and by necessity a period piece. It is set in a family-focused lakeside resort, a kind of place with a kind of ethos that no longer existed by the time of the movie's release in 1987. Much is made of the emergence of new forms of popular entertainment, new interpretations of old words like "baby," and the new social frontiers that would turn old- fashioned liberals like Jerry Orbach's character into conservatives without their knowledge. This is fertile ground for a drama, but a movie about dance—and this is, to its credit, a movie about dance—doesn't have time to do these ideas justice. The dangers of unsafe abortions in the pre-Roe era are highlighted, but in a way that is unfeasibly convenient. It is structured so that the romantic leads come out squeaky-clean heroes and their antagonists more villainous. The feelings of the woman "in trouble" are explored only in passing and only at moments calculated to serve the needs of the central story. Similarly, the prejudices of the upper middle-class are touched upon, but in the vaguest way. One oily sort speaks of sexual liaisons with the help as "slumming," and Swayze's itinerant dancer is obscurely identified as coming from "the streets." What streets, exactly, remain unknown, as does his ethnic identity, which he seems to hint at through a very tenuous, arguably Italian, inflection.
Though Eleanor Bergstein's script takes itself very seriously, and though its desire to "say" something meaningful is laudable albeit misplaced, its real power is, quite rightly, in the dance sequences. Unlike "Saturday Night Fever," which spends far too much time away from the dance floor and among dislikable people, "Dirty Dancing" is a worthy successor to the classics because it spends the bulk of its time on music and movement. Grey and Swayze look genuinely happy when they dance, and when the world shrinks to them they generate a feeling of goodwill that overshadows the movie's missteps and instances of overreach. There is an unshakable cheesiness to the film that the great dance movies of the past were too self-aware and witty to fall into. The way Grey's character falls for Swayze's is so pat, the way he expresses himself is so hammy, and the way Orbach's comes around at the end is so cutesy and orchestrated. But the important scenes, the dance montages, all look and sound great, and it's easy to feel good while watching them.
Happily, the film avoids the clichés of its genre. Nobody gives Grey a makeover, and nobody tells her to come out of her shell or to change who she is. In an early scene, she sheds an awkward sweater in favor of a sleeveless shirt without comment or even a visual acknowledgment of the wardrobe change. It's unclear whether that's a smart decision or just an oversight from director Emile Ardolino, but if it's the latter, it works in spite of itself. That's true of the movie generally.