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Chocolate box movie-making at its finest
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Dirty Dancing
1987 | 100mins | dir: Emile Ardolino | starring: Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey
reviewed by
Lebby Eyres
uploaded: 29-03-2004
It's everyone's favourite teen movie, but has Dirty Dancing really stood the test of time?
Dirty Dancing was not a popular film with the critics in 1987: it was labelled “a corny fairytale” and “a tired and relentlessly predictable story” ; the ending was “as false as it is sentimental”, the characters “competing for awards in obnoxiousness”.
Sadly for these misguided folk, Dirty Dancing remains the most memorable teen movie of the eighties. The current generation of teenagers have just voted it number four in their list of all-time favourite films, and reviewers of endlessly re-released DVD specials can’t help admit, even if it is through gritted teeth, to having “warm fuzzies” while watching it again.
Well, we might not describe Dirty Dancing’s appeal in quite the same way, but, hey, you know what they mean. Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, the ending sucks. Yes, Patrick Swayze is one of the unlikeliest love interests ever. But we just can’t help ourselves: Dirty Dancing is chocolate box movie making at its finest.
For the uninitiated, the none-too-tricky storyline goes something like this: ‘Baby’ (Jennifer Grey, pre career-wrecking nose job) is at a posh holiday camp with her family in 1963 America. Behind the scenes, the camp workers are perfecting the art of their crotch rubbing style of ‘dirty dancing’. When Baby stands in for Johnny’s (Swayze) partner in a merengue competition, things get rather dirty between them too.
The falling-in-love scenes are a teen dream: the pair practice their dance sequences in the lake, on logs, in the pouring rain - it’s erotic, but in a terribly nice way. Even the sex scenes are as fresh and innocent as Baby’s white cotton undies. What 16-year-old girl inside us all wouldn’t have wanted to lose their virginity in such a gloriously romantic (and seemingly painless) way. Hell, she’s not even pissed.
As nostalgia fests go, watching Dirty Dancing really can’t be beat, especially if you actually happened to be 16 in 1987. So why not stock up on booze, get the girls round, draw the curtains and whack the video on. And just make sure no one’s sitting in the corner.
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| "Nobody puts baby in a corner" |
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| 8/10
We love it, and secretly so does everyone else. |
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