frosted, fried, and leathern

Rating: 3/10 (6 December 2006)

Apparently, you are dirty dancing when you are sweating excessively in your tightest pair of matador pants and vehemently, jaggedly, irregularly slamming your 35-year old package against gawky underage girls who seem to enjoy your hideous "white man's overbite." Moments like this make Dirty Dancing an extremely, albeit unintentionally, hilarious movie. It is especially funny when watching it immediately after reading the comments posted on this site, many of which describe the movie as a powerful, amazing, sensual, touching, romantic experience. I, for one, could not help but keep such comments in mind while I was LAID OUT laughing at Johnny's "free styling" with Penny and company in the scene when Baby "carried a watermelon" to their secret dirty dancing party. I'm sorry, I know you all think Patrick Swayze is pure sex incarnate, but he looks ridiculous. I'm not saying he can't lead a woman around a ballroom because he can. I mean, obviously, the man is a trained dancer. It's when he starts snapping off though, trying to appear spontaneous to the beat of tacky oldies like "Do You Love Me," that he exposes himself to be the rhythmless spaz he is. And for the record, the ensemble of extras scattered about in this scene are not really dancing so much as they are having a whole bunch of dry sex.
Anyway, the thing that makes Dirty Dancing so priceless is that it takes itself dead seriously. Johnny isn't screwing around, for instance, when he explains that the vast number of rich, lonely housewives he's slept with under the guise of giving them dance lessons, were actually exploiting him:
Baby - "You were just using them, that's all." Johnny - "No, no that's not it, that's the thing, you see baby it wasn't like that. They were using me."
Then, instead of bursting into convulsive laughter like I do every time I hear the line, she falls for it and kisses him with all the passionate sympathy she can muster, trying very earnestly not to exploit him like the rich, lonely housewives did. Ha. Fool.
So the movie should be no good at all, unless you are able to find the humor in Patrick Swayze's pained-looking danceface or his thrusting, perky butt or his weird "street" accent. Or in the frosted, fried, and leathern results of Cynthia Rhodes' time spent in the tanning bed with a bottle of peroxide. Or in Jennifer Grey's many shaky voiced monologues about blossoming into a woman and learning the ways of the world. In short, those who hate on Dirty Dancing because they cannot find the humor in these things are probably kind of stale. And those who adore Dirty Dancing because they cannot find the humor in these things are probably kind of daft.