Before I get too far into this, let me
establish that I am not opposed to remakes, per se. A lot of people I knew were really upset
about even the prospect of a Footloose remake, for example; I actually was
excited about it and thought it was pretty good. I’m also generally a fan of the TV movie musicals
that have been coming out over the past few years; Peter Pan was pretty
bad and so was Rocky Horror, but most of them have been at least okay. So I shouldn’t have had a problem with ABC’s Dirty Dancing in theory; in practice, however…
It was bad. Here are the worst things about it, in no
particular order:
1) So
many minor characters get storylines here.
Baby’s mom, Marjorie (now played by Debra Messing), before just a bit
player, is now a sexually frustrated housewife who wants more from her
marriage. Her sister, Lisa (Sarah
Hyland), now has an interracial romance subplot. Vivian Pressman (Katey Sagal), before a
cheating, rich wife, is now a wealthy divorcee who confides in Marjorie about
the demise of her marriage. None of this
is terrible, per se, but some of the details I’ve hinted at point to some of
the other problems with the movie, including…
2) They
can’t just hint at anything in this remake.
They have to both show it and tell it.
In the original, we got that Johnny Castle (played here by former Pink
backup dancer Colt Prattes, played in the original and in our hearts by Patrick
Swayze) was probably sometimes having sex with Vivian in exchange for money and
gifts. Here, we actually see a sex scene
between him and Vivian; see her offer him her ex-husband’s watch; see him have
a conversation with Baby in which he explicitly explains how all of this works
(he does talk about it with Baby in the original, but in the original it’s more
like, “It’s easy to get sucked in when you’re poor and these women are so
beautiful and rich”; here it’s basically like, “I HAVE SEX FOR MONEY SOMETIMES.”) In the original, Baby’s father, Dr. Jake
Houseman, offers waiter Robbie a check to help with medical school; when Robbie
lets it slip that he was the one who got Penny pregnant, Jake simply takes the
check back, gives him a disgusted look, and walks away. Here, he orders Robbie to pay Penny back for
her abortion and threatens that if he doesn’t, he will call every hospital on
the east coast and keep him from ever getting a job.
The original trusted us to catch things
that were just alluded to; there were even some subtle things that probably
everyone didn’t get, but if you did, were great. For example, in the original, when Baby goes
to Robbie to ask him to pay for Penny’s abortion, he tries to give her a copy
of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and tells her to make sure to return it
because he has notes in the margins. If
you don’t know who Ayn Rand is, you don’t get it, but if you do, it just
underlines the fact that Robbie is a douchebag, and what’s even better is, you know
that Baby gets it and understands how douchey this makes Robbie. Here, they have to say everything out loud,
as if we’re all too stupid to get it otherwise.
Johnny actually says “I had the time of my life” as an actual line
here. It is so, so bad.
There were gender issues present in the
original. There were class issues
present in the original. Here, we have
multiple characters reading or discussing Betty Friedan’s The Feminine
Mystique, like, “LOOK, WE ARE FEMINISTS, OR AT LEAST INTERESTED IN LEARNING
ABOUT FEMINISM.” We have Lisa, the
morning after Robbie gets sexually aggressive with her, give a little speech to
her family about how someone isn’t a good person just because they’re going to
Harvard. We have the addition of her
interracial romance, which characters comment on in ways that make you
cringe. It’s just all so spelled out for
us that it’s insulting. Also...
3) The
characters sing sometimes. The original
had a lot of music and dancing in it.
There was no singing, and while I generally enjoy musicals, given that
this is not only a remake of the original, but a remake that follows the plot
of the original fairly closely, it really takes you out of the moment to have
Johnny actually SINGING “Time of My Life” to Baby, especially given that THE
MOVIE IS CALLED DIRTY DANCING AND THIS PART IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SOME
FAIRLY STRENOUS AND IMPRESSIVE DANCING IN IT.
Also, Abigail Breslin (Baby) can’t really dance. Yes, Baby is supposed to be just learning to
dance, but in the original, she’s good by the end. Imagine if Baby never really got the hang of
it and could never really do anything that difficult? That’s what happens here. She does do the lift. It doesn’t feel as triumphant as in the original. Also, even Dr. Houseman plays the piano and
sings in an empty dance studio at one point.
If this was leading up to him making love to his sexually frustrated
wife on the piano, that would have been pretty hot. Instead, it leads to a conversation with Baby
where she’s like, “I didn’t know you played,” and he’s all, “Eventually there
comes a time to put away childish things.”
Yeah, okay, we get it, you’ve lost your zest for life. Finally…
4 4) Baby
and Johnny just don’t really have a lot of chemistry here, which is basically
the most important thing. Though Patrick
Swayze and Jennifer Grey reportedly did not get along offscreen, they were
super hot together. Also, while Baby in
the original was somewhat nerdy and awkward, she also was pretty tough. There is one scene in the remake where Baby
beats on Johnny’s door crying about how he can’t just have sex with her and
then act like it doesn’t mean anything. He opens the door and grabs her and
kisses her and it’s pretty great, and all, but I just can’t see the original
Baby doing that. The original Baby does
not beg him to love her, ever. She wins
his love through her strength, determination, character, and intelligence. AS YOU SHOULD. Also, they never actually say they love each other,
because they’ve known each other like a week.
Here there are all these dramatic declarations of love. And we find out they don’t wind up
together. Like, we can probably GUESS they
don’t. They’re young and from two
different worlds and all that. We don’t
need to see her coming to see him years later with a husband and a kid. More ruining everything by spelling it all
out.
So. It was much worse than I expected it to be,
and I did not expect it to be good.
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