The Good: Good music, Good dancing, Moments of performance
The Bad: Predictable plot, Pacing issues, Character sacrificed for "effect" (dancing).
The Basics: Less sensual or interesting on the character or plot fronts than others have indicated, Dirty Dancing disappointed me (twice!).
Dirty Dancing came to me highly recommended from a most unlikely (in my mind) of sources. I remember my peers in middle school gushing over Dirty Dancing when I was a kid and all hoping that the older boys would come and grind with them. So, it seemed strange to me that my (almost) seventy year-old friend would be the one to insist I watch the film. She would have been in her early twenties in 1963, when the film is set and she had a strong sense of nostalgia about summers in the Catskills, which is the setting for Dirty Dancing. Having now watched the film twice, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about as far as the movie as an enduring "classic" and as an aside to my fiance: despite what your coworkers are saying, you're not missing anything.
The reason Dirty Dancing resonates so little with me is not because I was not alive in 1963 or even that the romance between Baby (Frances) and Johnny Castle is predictable, but rather that the pacing is off, the film utilizes EVERY classic conceit of a romance and far too much of the movie is preoccupied with establishing mood that is not actually as erotic as the filmmakers intend. Baby's attraction to Johnny Castle is clear from the moment she first sees him, but it is the most boring type of attraction and continues to reinforce the blase concept of the "good bad boy." This is not to say that Baby ought to have gone with blase, self-absorbed good rich kid Neil, but Johnny Castle's character did not have to be so canned.
In 1963, in the Catskills, the Houseman family arrives as a family resort for a few week's vacation. There, they plan to relax, take some dance lessons, swim, boat and network. Baby, the optimistic young woman bound to change the world, witnesses Johnny Castle being sternly told to present only certain dances and she becomes intrigued. While helping another worker carry watermelons, she enters a secret night dance where young people are dancing in ways they do not dance in front of their parents. Enter Johnny Castle and his dance partner, Penny. Jealous until she learns Penny is just his dance partner, Baby dances with Johnny Castle.
When Penny is sidelined with a pregnancy, Baby borrows money from her father to pay for a backalley abortion. Because Penny won't be up for dancing after that, Baby trains with Johnny Castle to dance with him in a presentation they had committed to before Penny got pregnant. The night is a success, Penny's abortion goes bad and Baby and Johnny Castle fall more and more in love. As Johnny Castle sorts out his feelings for Baby and disentangles himself from prior women he has seduced at the resort, Baby learns to dance and they prepare for the resort talent show and a dance unlike any they have performed publicly before!
If one wants an archetypal romantic drama, Dirty Dancing arguably has it all. There is the love at first sight, the young woman being swept off her feet by the man she knows she should not want (because society tells her so) and there is the guy from the other side of the tracks who is enchanted by the wealth and potential that the young woman represents. He puts his promiscuity on hold when he falls in love with her and there are the conflicts from ex-lovers and the girl's parents, it is all very formulaic and obvious in a way that is a tough sell to seasoned moviegoers. So what Dirty Dancing seems compelled to trade on is the flash of the dancing and the mood of two dancers. Unfortunately, in establishing the overall mood, Dirty Dancing fails to make Baby special to make her a credible interest to Johnny Castle.
In other words, Baby and Johnny Castle hook up - in reality - because they are the romantic leads in the film, not because Baby is especially different from any of the other women Johnny Castle would have encountered. That, perhaps, is the most troubling aspect of Dirty Dancing; in order for it to work, the viewer is asked to believe Johnny Castle's speech about being seduced by the money and cleanliness of the rich girls who come to the resort (we can buy that easy enough) AND that Baby is somehow more than any of those other perky, optimistic, young rich women Johnny Castle has encountered in his past there. It does not jive. Part of the reason for this is how the mood is established in big dance scenes.
With a movie titled Dirty Dancing, one expects sensuality; it's right there in the title. However, Dirty Dancing is a problematic mix of giant dance orgy scenes and detached body parts grinding. If one considers photographic erotica, there are essentially images of two people engaged in acts of lovemaking (often full bodies, looking at one another whenever possible, etc.) and then there is simple porn (pictures of erogenous zones out of context, usually for the masturbatory ease of the viewer). Arguably the former is much more erotic than the latter and represents a fundamental shift between what one wishes to get out of the experience (i.e. an emotive erotic experience vs. a depiction of a sex act to get oneself off with). In Dirty Dancing, too often director Emile Ardolino illustrates the latter, hips and legs grinding out of context with background characters that end up being simple depictions of two bodies (not even characters) slamming together. This is hardly erotic, enticing or even sustainable interesting. That Ardolino uses so much time for this unarousing flash as opposed to character development is problematic.
On the character front, Johnny Castle is pretty much the canned "bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks" type character. Most of his character consists of grunting, leering in a way that is intended to be smoky and prancing about with his shirt open or off entirely. Baby, apparently, swoons as much as she does because she has never seen a barechested man as much as she does with Johnny Castle at the resort.
To be fair to Dirty Dancing, there is a decent amount of palpable sexual chemistry between lead actors Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. Grey, who I had only seen prior in Bounce (reviewed here!) and the short-lived comedy It's Like, You Know . . . gives a decent performance as the naive, but optimistic young Baby who is seduced by a world unlike anything she knows. She and Patrick Swayze dance well together and the scene where the lip-synch to one another is perfectly executed by Grey. For his part, Swayze does what he can with the role of Johnny, but there is not much he has to do on the character front, outside a single monologue. Outside that, he needs to dance and look good with a shirt off. Mission accomplished Patrick!
Dirty Dancing is fleshed out with a notable supporting cast that helps to establish the world being recreated. Dancer Cynthia Rhodes plays Penny and adds a nice sense of flash. Similarly, Jerry Orbach lends some real credibility and a sense of solid decency as Baby's dad. Personally, with my love of Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!), I was excited to see Kelly Bishop on screen (though she is only there for about five minutes) as Baby's mother.
In the end, though, Dirty Dancing failed to captivate me and while the soundtrack was decent, there was too little original to this movie to make me recommend it.
For other movies where dancing is integral, please visit my reviews of:
Step-Up 3D
Black Swan
Singin’ In The Rain
5/10
For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the movie reviews I have written!
© 2012, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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