When teenager Ren and his family move from big-city Chicago to a small town in the West, he's in for a real case of culture shock after discovering he's living in a place where music and dancing are illegal.
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Reviews
GenerationofSwine
10
By GenerationofSwine
It's still one of my favorites and I could hardly walk when it first came out.
And now it's legend, so writing a real review is almost needless. Just about everyone has seen it. It's still regarded as a classic.
So I suppose the best thing to say is that it's like the Karate Kid...only with dancing rather than martial arts.
Single mother and son move into a new town. Son is an outsider that gets in trouble with the local bully. Son starts dating the local bully's girlfriend. Son and bully fight and...resolution.
However, it goes a bit deeper in that it references several cases of high school kids actually taking on town ordinances against dancing.
And Kevin Bacon is the new kid in town, so he's like the Karate Kid, but he also serves in the Pat Morita role as instructor.
And the evil dojo is actually a church and the bad guy is actually a preacher and not a Karate trainer and has a very kind heart and cares a lot for his community. So the main villain isn't really evil he just has a different point of view, and unlike movies today, he is allowed to have a different point of view, to really be wrong in his beliefs, and still be portrayed as a kind and caring person.
So, it's like the Karate Kid only with actual depth and much better soundtrack.
CinemaSerf
6
By CinemaSerf
"Ren" (Kevin Bacon) moves from the big city to a small town run by the rather puritanical preacher "Moore" (John Lithgow) only to find that dancing, singing - indeed just about every form of entertainment has been banished. He claims that is to protect them and their children from ungodly corrupting influences. The new boy is treated with enough circumspection before "Ariel" (Lori Singer) takes a shine to him, but once it's known that the daughter of the town bible-basher is having a romance with the disruptive influence, then battle lines are drawn. It's fair too say that "Ren" hasn't his problems to seek finding and keeping work and with the local lads who resent his cool, James Dean, style attitude. Things come to an head when he proposes at a town council meeting that the ban be lifted so that they can get a bit "Footloose". The drama here is as good as it's contemporaries like "Flashdance" (1983) and enjoyably builds on the craze that was probably started with and perpetuated by "Fame" (and it's "Kids") but the acting is all pretty mediocre, as the dialogue. It's essentially a film about a soundtrack - and there are plenty of songs here beginning with the title song then "Let's Hear it for the Boy" and Bonnie Tyler's "Holding Out for a Hero" amongst those complementing an underscore of AOR and some energetic dance moves from both Bacon and Singer. It was an huge film at the time and made many a reputation, but time has rather neutered that novelty and now it's a film I'd rather listen to than watch.
