Let's hear it . . .

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2011)

"Our Lord is testing us." Rev. Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid)
Footloose, 27 years later, is alive and well. It may not have the heavy-duty cast of the original (Kevin Bacon, John Lithgow, and Chris Penn to name a few), but it is updated smartly with steamier sex, tighter jeans ("If you put a quarter in her back pocket you can tell whether it's heads or tails"), and more suggestive dancing.
But the melodrama of a small Georgia town (originally the Midwest) is all there and the religious anchoring, too much so for my taste. The town banned dancing three years ago after a teen-age tragic car accident, and newcomer Ren (Kenny Wormald), from Boston is destined to change attitudes toward the expression of teen-age longing and passion by dancing out his feelings. Along with him are senior high-school buddies, more diverse than ever, who may be just a little too scrubbed but are still a helluva dance group.
Most notable is buddy Willard played by the talented Miles Teller with an easy Southern redneck charm and surprising neophyte dancing.
If you ask an unhip critic like me, there's not enough of this dancing and too much melodrama. Updating the action with country line dancing ("white man's wet dream") and crumping got me to hoping for more rather than less of the energetic and sexy foot work. Alas, Andie MacDowell as preacher wife Vi Moore needs her face time to be heroic and hip when more break dancing could have done the job. Even Frank Capra seems in on it as Ren gives his righteous speech in front of the town council about the freedom to dance.
Let's admit that Footloose is a formula film fulfilling its obligations with good cheer, some splendid dancing, and vividly colored costumes, characters, and sets to take an '80's treasure right into 2011.
Although the VW bug remains, director Craig Brewer changes for the better the original tractor chicken standoff to a school bus free for all, and he lets a couple of 10 year olds go all out with the cutest version of Let's Hear It for the Boy you'll ever hear.
Let's hear it for smart revisions.