Removed the good stuff

Rating: 1/10 (22 September 2013)

What was the point? The director just went through and removed all the good stuff from the first movie. The original is based on events which took place in Elmore City, OK and yes, they banned dancing. It's hard for today's teens to fathom how religious the 80s were, which might be why they can't grasp a movie like this. You can't make a modern remake of this movie because today's kids aren't suffocating under this type of extreme religiosity. In the original, the ban is on dancing, including a teen prom. The kids are only being reasonable to protest this. In this remake, the ban is on "lewd and lascivious dancing" which the teens think they have a right to perform in the streets.
In the original, Ren is an old soul. After his father dies, Ren and his mother must shack with his uncle, moving Ren from Chicago to a tiny town where dancing is banned. Instead of making things more difficult for his mother, Ren tries to fit in and treats everyone politely and respectfully, which results in him being bullied by the small towners. He even tolerates this and tries to play by their rules, never once pointing out the obvious insults a typical obnoxious city teen would have for the rural folks.
In this remake, Ren is instead that typical bratty teen, thinking an accident of birth makes him better than everyone, and greeting practically the entire town with the insult that they are hicks. Despite this, the town isn't even that small and is actually multicultural, and the kids dance to hip hop! The only issue the kids face is that their parents don't want them bumping and grinding too suggestively to it! Yeah, that's Ren's issue. His parents are dead, but that's his issue. Even the judge in this town had long hair as a teen, and Ren's uncle reminds him of this, to justify Ren blasting the town with noise pollution.
In the original, Ren must struggle to please an unreasonable uncle who blames him for things he didn't do, while this uncle has Ren's back before even asking him if he's guilty. Ren basically has no real struggles to speak of, yet he does a lot of whining anyway. We are supposed to sympathize enough over the loss of his parents to support him humping his girlfriend openly in the streets. The uncle thinks his little girls (and all little girls) should be exposed to this. Ren even declares to the adults that "as kids, its our job to do stupid things", yet he doesn't expand on what the jobs of adults might be.
Ariel's father protests not so much because he's a pastor, but because he maintains some shred of hope that his daughter is still a virgin, but when she informs her father that she's not, and Ren informs her father that his daughter is a slut, the pastor gives up and accepts that he will be a grandfather soon. Ren's revelation that Ariel is already hot for his bod means she should be allowed to dance lewd and become a teen mother.
In the original, the pastor and Ren finally bond because the pastor lost his son and Ren lost his father. Ren cleverly uses Bible verses to make his point at the town meeting, because it is the only way to convince a highly religious town that bases all of their rules on the Bible. He does this because he is a wise, respectful young man who isn't paranoid of a little studying. In the remake "sir, your daughter is already a slut" is the extent of Ren's argument to the pastor, yet it is (apparently) oddly persuasive.
This movie is just laughably bad, so much so that even people who can't quite explain why it's laughably bad still know that it is.