Saw Advance Screening of Brewer's Footloose- Outstanding.

Rating: Null/10 (29 July 2011)

I was not expecting a great film, to be perfectly honest. The original was fun, but silly, a big wad of bubble gum for the brain. Its plot was silly, its characters were anemically underdeveloped, but it was fun. Silly fun, but fun.
Craig Brewer's remake kept the fun--- No, improved upon the fun, but featured fully developed characters that were deserving of whatever empathy the audience can give them.
For the first time, you get to see what drives these characters. What makes this dance, this fight, so important to Ren? What makes Ariel the self-destructive party girl? But the biggest character improvement has to be Rev. Shaw. John Lithgow did a great job in the original, making you hate him the beginning and feel empathy for the changes he goes through along the way. But Dennis Quaid's version of the same character tugs at the heartstrings from his first moment on screen and never loses his humanity in quite the same way. Just as in the original, Ren McCormick is the McGuffin--- The thing that it's about that it's not really about. Footloose is really the story of Rev. Shaw's struggle to become a better man and better father.
I cannot heap enough praise on the cast. Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough were utterly remarkable as Ren and Ariel, transforming them into characters that are easy to care about. Ariel was annoying in the original; The remake has you pleading "Will someone please help this lost child?" Miles Teller very nearly steals the show, as his predecessor Chris Penn did. Ziah Colon plays Ariel's friend Rusty as a character rather the prop that she was in the original. And Ray McKinnon put on a scene-stealing performance as Ren's Uncle Wes.
Don't let the character development lead you to believe that the pace is slower, or that it is less fun. To the contrary, Brewer has made a very fun, fast paced movie.
The true difference is this: The original film was quite content to treat its southern characters as rednecks, people to be made fun of. You don't laugh with those characters. You laugh AT them.
Brewer is a Tennessean (Which is why I was lucky enough to catch this screening in Memphis) and truly loves the South. And he never allowed his characters to devolve into caricatures.
If there is any justice, this will be one of the bigger films this year. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I saw an early cut--- Brewer said before the screening that there were three audio cues that were to be recut, and the closing credits were not finished.
But make no mistake, I will see it again when it opens.