Dance

Dance Category: 5th September

	Title	Rachel’s Score (/5)	James’ Score (/5)	Total Score (/10)
1	Centre Stage	3	2	5
2	Dirty Dancing	2	2	4
3	Step Up	3	2	5
4	Flashdance	2	1	3
5	Happy Feet	3.5	3.5	7
6	Footloose	4	4	8

Average: 5.4/10

Reviews

• Centre Stage: I didn’t get a whole lot from this movie. It seemed almost like a stage dancer documentary with a hollywood script. The actors were dancers and not actors but they didn’t do a bad job off stage and they were very very good on stage. I took it to be simply a look at what its like being a young professional dancer trying to make it in an extremely competitive field. Not a terrible movie, but not terribly good.

• Dirty Dancing: My goodness what a let down. This is a weird boring movie about a girl who appears to be about 15 years old having a creepy love affair with a man who I’m guessing is in his late twenties. Swayze plays a loser dance instructor/performer at an upper class country club who falls in love with Baby, a young girl who is coming into the real world for the first time. Nothing much really happens except that we all get to see Patrick Swayze doing some sexy dancing with a teenager.

• Step Up: This movie was better than the first two dance movies but not by much. A kid gets in trouble and has to do community service maintenance at the school he got caught vandalizing. Turns out its a performing arts school and the thug is a talented dancer. He finds an opportunity to get his life straight and after some predictable hiccups and love interest he takes it. Not very difficult to watch unless you wanted something meaty and deep to enjoy. Good dancing too.

• Flashdance: Okay, what the hell? I’m completely baffled as to why this movie is such an icon. Nothing happens. Nothing. The girl is a welder and a dancer and at the end of the movie she does the big dance (that wasn’t very impressive) that we see in movie montages over and over again. A complete bore from start to finish. I must have missed something because I just didn’t get it.

• Happy Feet: Finally a good movie in the dance category. Everyone expresses themselves differently, some people cook, some people use a paintbrush, some sing, and some dance. Everyone has something to express and it needs to be expressed. Happy Feet tries to tell us we need to accept each other and work together, thats the only way we’ll survive the future. A big time cast, good jokes, and some stunning CGI brings this kids movie to a wider audience. Certainly it could have been better, a bit less formulaic and predictable, but its one of the better animated kids movies.

• Footloose: This movie is fantastic. Kevin Bacon moves to a small town to find its post grief inflicted no dancing laws choking the life out of everyone living there. He appeals to the town leaders sense of reason and honesty and sets in motion a process of healing and forgiveness in the grief stricken town. I’ll take this opportunity to point out that if a movie is only good during the decade in which it was released then it isn’t any good. If a huge 80’s movie cannot outlive the 80’s then it has failed as a film. Dirty Dancing, Flashdance etc. failed this test, Footloose, however, did not. There are thousands of half centry old movies that still live on and stand up tall as great movies. The ones that fall down, fall down. I don’t care if “it was huge when it came out”. If it isn’t good now, it isn’t good. Make sure you see Footloose before you die, its very good.

Reviewed by James