Live long enough, and it's true: the fads and fashions of your youth will come back around, for no apparent reason. I always liked Footloose well enough, when it first came out, and I certainly played my way through the soundtrack much like the rest of my pop generation. But the curious reverence for it as we age has always seemed odd; it's something about Kevin Bacon and one's youth and a "time to dance"... or something. All of which seem both like silly reasons to me, and also somehow really missing the point of why the film, as a film, touched a cultural nerve.
The original Footloose was something of an oddity. There hadn't been a muical in several years, especially since the antidisco backlash of late 1979 and early 80; until 1982 we were in a bit of a dark musical moment. Footloose was also one of Hollywood's early tests of the new-fangled MTV and the surging youth culture crashing behind it; and as such, it had a pretty clear field on which to make its point (coupled, neatly, with Flashdance). It's worth remembering that Kevin Bacon, like Jennifer Beals, was an actor with no real dance skills whose dances were filmed with a carefully shot double. At heart, the people behind the film didn't entirely trust that audiences would go for a film with dancing at its core.
It's unsurprising, perhaps, that somebody would be stupid brave enough to go back and remake Footloose. It does make one wonder if we're going back to resurrect Flashdance too... let's hear it for the welding ballerinas who strip in their spare time! But Footloose is an easier sell: it's a high school story about rebellion and music and sex and dancing. And even if it is "iconic" in the original version, like Dirty Dancing, some of that "iconic" status is probably way overblown.
The remake of Footloose does make a good argument that, yes, you can tough the teen legends of eighties pop culture and not just get away with it, but yes, improve on it (indeed, much by the remake of Fame of a couple of years back). This Footloose swaggers with more confidence, knowing that an audience of film and TV dance watchers is all around. At the same time, it has a revernce for the original that's probably a bit unnecessary, and at times probably holds it back.
Footloose is still the story of Ren, a big city boy who moves to a small town after the death of his Mom, to live with a caring Uncle and his family. This time, thoughm rather than Utah, we're in Georgia, which does complicate some of the film's politics (racial issues... anyone?). But still, Ren arrives with all his teen rebellion, only to discover he's living in a dry town where dancing is banned. In short order he falls in with a cool crowd of kids who yearn to break the rules, incuding the town preacher's wayward daughter, whose brother died a few years back coming back from an out of town party. That's when the laws got passed.
This Footloose integrates its dance numbers more smoothly into the overall proceedings, and shows a surprisingly deft touch in terms of choreography that manages to both the "wow" moments wile not seeming too much like a completely set routine. There's a lot of hip-hop and breakdance thrown in, as these things do these days, but there's also a night urban country twist that makes this feel less like Step Up and such than it might otherwise.
As Ren, Kenny Wormald probably has the biggest shoes to fill, and if he's no Kevin Bacon, he gives off a gritty charm that seems properly scaled to this film's ambitions. This version is less preachy, less didactic, less obvious about the "kids vs. mean adults" vibe that drove the original. Everybody, this film suggests, is well intentioned, just perhaps a little overboard. Wormald's a pretty stunning dancer to boot, and that ease and grace doesn't just let him flow seamlessly from dialogue to dancing, but gives his performance a physical presence that Bacon's, to some extent, lacked. Wormald is a tight coil, waiting to spring into dance. Bacon, not so much.
As Ariel, the preacher's daughter, Julianne Hough also aquits herself nicely as more than a pretty (actually, strikingly beautiful) face and competent dancer. The mixture of cinstant simmering rage, the bad girl thrillseeking, and the sense of a youth pushing too hard and too soon to play grown up games all swirl in her, just beneath the surface. And when it comes out in her dancing... look out.
The rest of the cast is... fine. Miles Teller, as Ren's gawky, non-dancing friend manages the conversion to show dancing with a real charm. And Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell also update the John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest roles as Ariel's uptight parents - there's less distance between them and the kids (if nothing else... back then, they were the kids), easing some of the "they just don't get it" assumptions of the original.
With less push-pull tension between adults and kids, and a more seamless feel to its musical elements, this Footloose hangs together better than the original, and puts a newfound emphasis on the film's darker elements: the film brims with the sorrow of lives lost too soon (be it the kids from town, or Ren's Mom) and a real sense of rage at forces beyond our human control. One change, which makes Ariel's bad boy older and meaner, adds a lot to the darker feel. But the film can't escape one of its less savory thematic suggestions: that "bad" girls just need the love of a good man, preferably one who can team with her concerned Dad.
That, after all, is a reminder that Footloose isn't especially different from a long line of moralizing films about "the youth of today" , Ren as a character not that far from James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. It's worth remembering too that Footloose's final, bravura dance sequence, doesn't happen until after a fairly ugly fight in the parking lot, where Ren shows himself both strong and sensistive. And once he drops that tire iron, it's all smiles and back to the dance floor. In real life... rage doesn't disspate quite so easily.
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