At least we get to see Chris Penn dance

Rating: 3/10 (20 November 2003)

I used to LOVE this movie, and I remember I got the soundtrack for Easter when I was like, 11 or something. It really is a crummy movie, but oddly engaging... mainly because it is so incredibly surreal and laughable in how it takes itself so seriously.
*Possible Spoilers*
I remember even as a kid, I thought "Holy cow, for a town that didn't allow dancing and music for years, these kids sure can dance well." What are even funnier are the people who are in it - Lithgow did this film two years after Garp. Did he think that this was going to be a meaty role? But then again, he did willingly star in Third Rock from the Sun. And Dianne Wiest - Woody Allen staple and Oscar winner, who has about 4 lines in the movie. Her job is to pretty much look pensive and pious. I don't think I even need to bring up Mr. Kevin Bacon and his goofy dance through the grain mill.

While this film is not as inherently horrible as say, Xanadu, it's also not nearly as hilarious because it takes itself waaaaaaay too seriously. Of course, it has its moments, especially the part where the dance is beginning and no one is dancing. Why? Let's pretend it's not because Kevin Bacon isn't there in his stupid outfit to scream "Let's Daaaaaaaance!!!!!!!!", (rather, is outside getting his ass beat down by the head redneck until he somehow manages to pull out of it and kick said redneck's ass. How the hell did THAT happen?) But in reality because the song playing is the Loverboy guy and Ann Wilson's "Almost Paradise." I think that as kids if we were sexually oppressed and sheltered and that song came on we wouldn't have danced to that crap song either. Yes, this was the 80's, and mid-80's to boot so the clothes, dancing and dialogue are hilariously dated. These kids must have somehow obtained pirate copies of Radio Free Solid Gold Dancers or something, especially the skinny white kid doing "The Robot".
This movie is up there with 80's `classics' like `Flashdance' where we find that while most of us loved the movie as kids, we see it through adult eyes twenty years later and realize what our parents probably thought: `What a crap movie.' The difference being, our nostalgia sometimes compels us to avoid averting our eyes, like a train wreck.
--Shelly