Footloose Review
By Karen Dahlstrom
Shake and Remake
Ah, remember the halcyon days of youth, when all you needed was some loud music, tight pants and an empty warehouse to dance away your teenage angst? Now you can relive that simple time with "Footloose", a faithful remake of the 80s pop hit from director Craig Brewer ("
Hustle and Flow").
The good news is, if you liked the first version, you won't hate the remake. The filmmakers (including original screenwriter Dean Pitchford) have kept close to the original, almost beat for beat. Even the soundtrack is reused, updated for the booty-poppin' / line dancin' needs of today's youth.
Though the setting is moved to sweaty rural Georgia, the story's basically the same: After a tragic car crash claimed the lives of several partying teens, the city fathers of Bofort have instituted a curfew and ban against loud music, lewd behavior and unsupervised dancing among the local teens. Fast forward three years and enter Ren MacCormack (Kenny Wormald), a city boy with a Boston accent, come to live with his aunt and uncle in after his mother's death. After unwittingly breaking one of the town's Draconian laws, Ren's tagged as a troublemaker. The town's pastor, played by Dennis Quaid, worries that Ren may prove to be a bad influence on his daughter, Ariel (Julianne Hough), unaware that the preacher's kid is the wildest girl in town.
The kids in the town do their best to circumvent the dancing laws, at times aided by sympathetic adults who don't mind them crunking in their parking lot. Meanwhile, Ariel does her best to tempt the new boy, frustrated by his (initial) indifference. Ren makes do in the new town with help from his uncle, Wes (Ray McKinnon) and his affable and oafish new friend, Willard (Miles Teller). McKinnon and Teller provide much of the film's lighter moments, each having enough charisma to make up for the film's dancin'-est (but otherwise nondescript) stars.
Newcomers Wormald and Hough can certainly move, but are fairly bland acting-wise. Not that this film is about high drama, mind you. Hough, in impossibly tight pants/cut-offs/skirts, moves like the world is her stripper pole. Wormald's frenetic angry dancin' scene would make Kevin Bacon proud. Together, they make country line dancing seem almost sexy.
Director Brewer manages to put a slightly gritty, sweaty haze over the proceedings, giving a film that is basically an excuse to string dance scenes together a kind of low-down, backwoods flavor. In spite of the story's inherent silly exuberance, it does inspire one to get down and get funky. Did "Footloose" need to be remade? Probably not, but you can't fault it for wanting to cut loose one more time.
