The movie that made Kevin Bacon a star, small town Southern town prohibit fdancing till Northern teen sets em straight, gets rebooted and gets rebooted well. From Blake Shelton's muscular cover of Kenny Loggins title song to Julianne "I'm not a virgin, can you make a law against that?" Hough Preacher's daughter gone bad thru Kenny Wormald good boy dressed like James Dean mourning (for his dead Mommy) loose footer, this is a fun Three years earlier, the preacher (Dennis Quaid) son and four other teens die in a car accident. This leads the twn elders to put up curfews and ban loud music and no dancing of course. All very Plato's "The Republic"
There are lots of not very villainous villains, tons of excellent dancing, three set pieces (and a neat trick of concentrating on foot movement, an entirely segregated town and a big bash send off.They break dance, they freestyle, they do-ci-do and they dirty dance, and it is all exuberant good fun on the way to the happy ending. It absolutely makes its point that dance is as expression of energy and joy in life.
"This is our time" the Boston replant claims. And with Julianne making goo goo eyes at him you can see why.
Blake Shelton's titular cover is pretty good, and "Fake ID" is fun, the rest of the country stuff works when dance, blows when ballads, the rethinking of Bonnie Tyler's campy classic "Make Way for A hero" as "Need A Hero" is just dreadful.
No Quiet Riot on the soundtrack album, but it is kinda fun when Boston boy is driving his souped up VV Beetle and blasting em.
Movie: B+
Music: B