Footloose

 

2 Stars

The country-twang remake of "Footloose" strives to give us a more down-home experience than the original film. But is a more authentic "Footloose" -- with less dancing, yet -- really the way to go?

The first one's fun largely because it's hooey, as synthetic as most of the fabrics worn by Kevin Bacon. It boasts genuinely charming things like the dancing-feet opening credits sequence, and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" (Bacon teaching Christopher Penn about rhythm).

The '84 model also features John Lithgow's unexpectedly subtle portrayal of the reverend whose grief overcomes his good sense regarding what's right for the underage citizenry of his Western mountain village.

The new "Footloose" smooths out some of the more outlandish mood swings of the earlier telling. A real director, Craig Brewer, who did "Hustle & Flow," was hired to give the material some emotional grounding. In flashes -- the way Brewer focuses on the female lead's face after she decides to lose her virginity to a not-nice guy, for example -- it connects with the audience. But the remake's dance-trained leads, Kenny Wormald (a former Justin Timberlake backup performer) and Julianne Hough (a "Dancing With the Stars" alum), simply do not pop the way Bacon and Lori Singer did, underneath all their collective hair. The result is a film that feels hidebound. And nobody ever called a dance-driven movie "hidebound."

The action has been relocated to the most conspicuously and fabulously multiracial rural town in Georgia, where the kids gyrate like strippers in training at the local drive-in when the Rev. Shaw (Dennis Quaid this time) isn't around to scold everybody. Ren (Wormald), the new kid in town, is now a motherless child, attracting the attention (and vice versa) of the reverend's daughter Ariel (Hough). A prologue shows us the fatal car accident, and the death of Ariel's brother, which we only heard about in the first film.

Some of the changes work and needed addressing. In the first film, when Ariel gets beaten up by her boyfriend, nobody even remarks on the bruises, whereas here the violence is treated more seriously. Brewer's version, though, lacks a distinct personality of its own. When a film depends on feeling something between the photogenic but antiseptic Wormald and Hough, and you don't, you realize why that film may come up short in ways unrelated to dance training.

I write this as someone who enjoyed "Step Up 3D," which is twice as bubble-gummy as "Footloose," but also twice as lively and a lot smarter about how to film bodies in motion. That film employed the same dance director, Jamal Sims, as this one. He has talent. So does Brewer. Whether the two were destined to collaborate is another matter.

 

     RSS

 

"Footloose" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some teen drug and alcohol use, sexual content, violence and language).

Running time: 1:53.

Cast: Kenny Wormald (Ren); Julianne Hough (Ariel); Dennis Quaid (Rev. Shaw); Andie MacDowell (Vi); Miles Teller (Willard); Ziah Colon (Rusty).

Credits: Directed by Craig Brewer; written by Dean Pitchford and Craig Brewer, based on the 1984 film; produced by Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, Dylan Sellers and Brad Weston. A Paramount Pictures release.

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

 

The Big Year

The Big Year
Michael Phillips

Divorcee Brad (Jack Black) dreams of besting the birding record-holder, a contractor (Owen Wilson) who once identified 732 separate species in a 'big year.' Steve Martin enters the mix as a competitive industrialist.

The Big Year
Bill Wine

While The Big Year isn't for the birds, it's about the birds to a fault. Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and Jack Black play bird watchers trying to win the prestigious North American competition and be named, 'The Best Bird Watcher in the World'

 

Footloose

Footloose
Michael Phillips

This remake of '80s classic misses a few steps. The leads, in the form of Kenny Wormald as Ren and Julianne Hough as Ariel, simply don't pop onscreen. Relocated to rural Georgia, the local kids dance to rebel against Rev. Shaw (Dennis Quaid).

Footloose
Bill Wine

It's a reboot of the popular 1984 teen dance drama that made a star of Kevin Bacon. Kenny Wormald inherits the Bacon role, the rebel-with-a-cause protagonist and gifted dancer from Boston who comes to the small town of Bomont, Tennessee. Dennis Quaid takes over the antagonist role, played in the original by John Lithgow, as the stern minister who is passionately opposed to public dancing

 

The Thing

The Thing
Michael Phillips

A paleontologist played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead is recruited to join a research team in Antarctica that has made a significant discovery in the annals of UFOs. Which is to say, they've found one. Director Matthijs van Heijningen remakes John Carpenter's 1982 cult classic rather well

 

Blackthorn

Blackthorn
Betsy Sharkey

Spanish filmmaker Mateo Gil's lightly rendered reimagining of the later days of Butch Cassidy expands on the rumors that the legendary outlaw and the Sundance Kid did not die in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia.

 

Trespass

Trespass
Bill Wine

Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman play upscale marrieds living in a seemingly secure mansion in Louisiana with their teenage daughter. When three masked thugs who gain entrance by impersonating cops take them hostage, they demand that Cage open his elaborate wall safe and extract the fortune in diamonds

 

Copyright © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.