Dirty Dancing (1987)

“Dirty Dancing” fits in perfectly with a group of films that I dislike, not because they’re bad, but because they’re just not to my taste. It’s an adequately constructed chick-flick with decent performances and passable cinematography, but I’ll never understand why this movie is viewed as a life-changing motion picture by so many.

Patrick Swayze is pretty good here, this certainly isn’t his best performance (he’s much better in “Point Break”, which also happens to be a far more entertaining film) but he’s suitably charismatic, I suppose. Jennifer Grey is solid as the protagonist of the film, she’s believable in the dance scenes and is effective during the more dialogue-heavy moments. My main complaint with the two stars is that their character’s relationship didn’t feel very realistic; this may have been down to the soppy dialogue or to the lack of chemistry between the two leads, but I never believed that the characters were actually in love.

The only actor I found particularly noteworthy was Wayne Knight, he’s got a fantastic screen presence and is always great in everything he appears in (“I can't believe I have to drive ALL the way to work on a Saturday. All the way to work!”)

The soundtrack in “Dirty Dancing” is fine, there are a couple of memorable tracks that stayed in my head for a few minutes, but none of the songs come close to other timeless 80s classics like “Danger Zone”, “The Power of Love” or “Eye of the Tiger.”

Overall, “Dirty Dancing” is acceptable. The actors are ok, the music is alright and the more technical aspects of the film are unremarkable. A lot of the conflict between the characters feels forced, coming off like a second-rate soap opera rather than a tear-jerking drama. If you like this sort of film, that’s great, but if I were going to watch a movie like this, I’d just watch “Footloose” instead.