Cut loose! A movie that is, unbelievably, better than the original.

Rating: 8/10 (27 May 2012)

You do realize that once you remake a film, there is no going back. That happened when I saw the original and remake of "Hairspray". My hand is somewhat going to shame, because there is a remake of "Dirty Dancing" coming out soon. The originals, of course, are always better. Now I realize you can't remake a 1984 classic starring Kevin Bacon called "Footloose", but there you go. I have seen the original and even though I found some scenes slow, the rest of the movie and the dancing scenes were terrific. For Craig Brewer, the director who made "Hustle & Flow" and "Black Snake Moan", he was a fan of this movie and he wanted to do a remake that would stay true to the original film. For it to be released during the "Step Up" era, who would've thunk it that the new "Footloose" is a genuine surprise, a remake that is unbelievably better than the original. Some has changed, but not a lot. And the remake doesn't feel slow, it just moves fast. It's simple: Start with a small town called Bomont, Georgia, where the town's council has banned public dancing, teen drinking and music. Enter a kid from Boston named Ren MacCormack (back-up dancer Kenny Wormald) who comes to Bomont in order to shake things up. He makes a friend in Willard (the scene-stealing Miles Teller in the late Chris Penn role) and the sexy and rebellious red-boots-wearing Ariel (Julianne Hough), daughter of Reverend Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid in the John Lithgow role), girlfriend of the stuck-up Redneck Chuck Cranston (Patrick John Flueger). What Ren does is challenge the town in order to remove the law of banning public dancing and music. Only then he realizes that once you make a change, everything you know will start to change you. And there's no going back to that. The remake of "Footloose" does have a couple non-fatal glitches into the system, but the dancing (including the Angry Dance, the "Let's Hear It For The Boy" montage and the "Footloose" finale) are awesome and the young actors are terrific, especially Wormald and Hough. They're not Kevin Bacon or Lori Singer, but they sure hold their own and their amazing dancing abilities. Let's leave it at this, this movie made me want to cut loose. Thanks to Craig Brewer for giving us this remake we don't need, but a movie I happen to enjoy.