Despite plot similarities, and an opening montage that features
the original title script, this new Footloose from Hustle and Flow
director Craig Brewer finds enough new steps to keep it interesting.
Best of all, he casts real dancers in the lead roles, ensuring the film
finds authentic beats despite its central, and somewhat insane, dilemma
of “no dancing allowed.”
Starring: Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough and Dennis Quaid
Rating: Three stars out of five
The
first tableau almost makes you think they delivered the wrong print,
because it looks, and feels, like the original ’80s piece of dance-hall
kitsch that made Kevin Bacon a household name and a baseline for degrees
of fame.
A bunch of teenagers are dancing around to the original
Kenny Loggins track as the neon-red letters spelling “Footloose” stretch
across the screen. Will this be a complete remake of the first
cinematic cheese plate? Has director Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow)
decided to hang up the auteur spurs and just cash in with a shot-by-shot
recreation?
Or will this homage come to a screeching halt within five minutes, and set this new movie on its own course?
I
can safely say the latter, because Brewer not only shatters
expectation, he drives a semi-trailer through it by the end of the first
act.
It’s a shocking — and oddly funny — way to start the
story, but it successfully releases the film from the ties of the past,
and launches it into the present, where a whole new generation is
already finding its own beat.
The introduction takes care of the
central premise, which also could have been the film’s biggest problem:
How on earth do you sell the idea of a small American town that does not
allow dancing?
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In the first movie, we went along with the notion
that an uptight preacher prohibited dancing because it was too sexual
and amoral. In these days of Glee and Dancing with the Stars, it’s hard
to paint all brands of boogie shoes with a disco brush, so the sexually
lascivious part of the argument is dead.
Instead, we get an
argument about late-night carousing with amplified music, because that’s
the kind of stuff that leads to kids drinking and driving, and, all too
often, into a premature grave.
When we first meet the people of
this small Midwestern town, they’re in the clutches of grief, having
lost a carload of graduates in a highway accident. The local preacher,
Dennis Quaid, decides to lobby the town council to enact a curfew, as
well as anti-party legislation.
Everyone agrees, but when young
Ren MacCormack (Kenny Wormald) hits town as an outsider from Boston, the
status quo comes into question.
Ren just lost his mother to cancer, so he’s living with his aunt and uncle — two of the town’s freer spirits.
Like
his previous Bacon incarnation, Ren likes to dance and he likes to
listen to music played loud. He doesn’t even realize it’s against the
law, until he takes his newly restored VW Beetle out for a test spin
with his iPod plugged into a makeshift speaker array.
It doesn’t
take Ren long to figure out the lay of the land. He’s not only cited for
a traffic violation for the amplified tunes, he runs afoul of the
all-potent preacher by befriending his troubled daughter (Julianne
Hough).
You can figure out the rest of it from there, because this
recreation still relies on the same dramatic waypoints: Outsider kid
falls for the town princess, but needs to foment full-on revolt in order
to win her over. Ren has to make dancing legal, heal the wounds of loss
and shake his tight little booty into his girlfriend’s good graces
before the final credits roll.
There’s never any doubt he’ll be
able to pull it off. But there’s endless uncertainty about whether this
movie will be freshly revisionist, or pathetically cliche. And this is
where Brewer’s indie cred really comes in handy: He sees things
cinematically, so every shot in this big Hollywood production has
compositional heft and a fleeting sense of authenticity.
Yes, amid
the dross and dance numbers, this movie finds emotional realism in the
body itself. Brewer cast two real dancers in the leads with Wormald and
Hough, and that makes a huge difference, because dancers move around in
space differently than most mortals.
They are so keenly aware of
their physical reality, they can interact with the very air around them
with the poetry of a dance partner. You can feel it. Moreover, you can
see it in every single gesture.
Wormald is not the greatest actor
in the world, but because he’s an incredible dancer, he can act with his
body. The same goes for Hough, who sinks her hips into the bucket seat
of sexuality, but can barely deliver a line without sounding vapid and
selfish. This may have been the dramatic aim, but it all slides around
on the surface until we cut rug.
When the dance scenes happen, we
feel the rush of adrenalin. We sense the corners of our mouths turn up,
and we can suspend disbelief for the duration. That’s all any movie has
to do, and Footloose pulls it off, but it goes one better by delivering a
message about joy, and discovering your inner Fred or Ginger.
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