Product: Dirty Dancing (1987)
Rating: 3.0
Somewhere between a musical and a morality tale
Patrick Swayze 1952-2009. The year was 1963, Kennedy was alive and screwing, women's lib was on the verge of eruption, the summer of love was just around the corner, and the Houseman family are spending the last few days of summer at Kellerman's Resort in the Catskills. Dr. and Mrs. Jake Houseman are part of the more affluent middle-class who probably make their home somewhere in Long Island and are unabashed intellectual liberal snobs. Their daughters Lisa and Baby (real name Frances after Frances Perkins) couldn't be more of the cliched big sister/little sister polar opposites: Baby is an intellectual idealist who was more than likely forced into university (and don't you just love how Jake talks over his daughter as she suffers through a dance with the owner's nephew that she's going to be an English major when she tells him she's going for economics- get that MRS from a hotelier my dear!) and Lisa is an oblivious brushoff who is going to get hitched to the first Wall Street trader that knocks her up (interior design school be damned!). All of a sudden the roguish Johnny Castle bounds into the dance hall to samba his way into the gowns of all desperate housewives to sell dance lessons- all else verboten or it's your a$$, you working-class southern hick! Then baby carries a watermelon, pays for Penny's abortion, does a half-a$$ed performance with Johnny, he pops her cherry, and they dance to a Bill Medley classic bringing together rich and poor, opening the floodgates of freedom and love, and the rest history...Thank God I was 13 when I finally saw this saccharine-coated load! Now I distinctly remember the TV ads for Dirty Dancing back in '87, and I think it's a bit of false advertising. I was expecting something along the lines of 9 1/2 Weeks or Wild Orchid mostly because of the tight, grainy black and white shots of writhing bodies and the bright fuchsia title font. Who knew such a suggestive title could sell such an innocuous, and at times comical romance that revolved around rather intricate dancing. Dancing With the Stars my a$$! I think Eleanor Bergstein was going for a Pride & Prejudice spin on her romantic pratfalls when she was a teen mambo queen bumming around Catskills luxury resorts. I give this film three stars because the only thing that hooks me is the dancing, the soundtrack, and the realistic hardscrabble lives of undiscovered professional dancers who will do anything to survive.The cheap thrill for me (and I suspect many others) is Baby's initial descent into the dark side. Now she "wanders" into the staff quarters and sees one of the lackeys struggling with watermelons. Now he makes fun of her for dancing with his wannabe boss, but he's impressed with Baby's sass (as well as sincerity) and they cross the bridge (ooh, symbolism alert! Death! End of innocence! SEX! SEX! SEX!). I can't help but equate the scene where they approach this gigantic, dimly-lit barn-like structure with Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? where Connie plays pretend in the diner where the big kids hang out. So lackey butt bumps the doors open to reveal a rock n' roll orgy of fierce looking sweaty people grinding away to Do You Love Me as Baby muddles uncomfortably through the throng of sin. Johnny and Penny flash through the doors to the wild adulations of their fellow upstarts and take their place as the brother and sister king and queen of dirty dancing. Baby can't take her eyes off Johnny's tight abs and matching a$$ and Johnny gives her a once-over making her feel 2 inches tall before teasing her onto the dance floor. It all plateaus from there.All in all a distracting coming-of-age flick that could only get better with time or get wrecked with a sequel. And Dirty Dancing has weathered the storm of both gracefully.