Everyone has movies that are such a key part of their lives that they are nearly sacred. For most of us, they are “coming of age” movies, or movies that are a big part of our childhood. Just a few of the ones on my list would be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, and Footloose.
So you can imagine that I did not take the news of a Footloose remake well. At all.
It is an ’80s classic! How could they remake it and even come CLOSE to the original? No way! That is just so wrong!
But tonight when Amy offered up free passes for a sneak preview on Twitter, I decided to take her up on it. Dude, I will see almost ANY movie for free! I asked Mike to join me, and we were off for the Studio Movie Grill at Town & Country on the west side of Houston.
I don’t want to give away too much, but it was not the horrible remake I was bracing myself for. I found myself giddy and almost toe-tapping over the remake of the opening scene. You know the one – all the shoes shuffling and dancing to Footloose. Even doing the dance that they did in the original movie. But quickly I discovered that this movie had been rewritten almost completely. The premise is the same, and the kids just want to dance. But the rest of it? Instead of attempting to recreate the original movie, they did us all a favor and wrote a completely new, updated version! YAY!
Some of the classic scenes have been redone, and they were done very well as a nod to the original movie. Not lame at all like I was expecting. You’ll know them when you see them. And if you were a high school girl in 1984 when the original came out at watched the video over and over with your best friend, and even owned the soundtrack on cassette and later on CD, you’ll be thrilled when you recognize some of your favorite songs are still there. But there is just enough differences to keep it interesting for you, and just enough of a modern update to make it current.
Was it the most gripping movie I’ll watch in 2011? No, of course not. It wasn’t meant to be. Is it a movie that will make you smile, tap your toes, and maybe even cry a little bit? Yes, yes it is. I’d give it an 8 out of 10, I would have cast someone a little stronger as Ren probably (of course, Kevin Bacon is hard to top), and I would have put Kevin Bacon in as a cameo somewhere. Just to make the moms in the audience giddy. It is the sort of movie I’ll watch again when I spot it on the movie channel or NetFlix. Totally worth it!
Disclaimer: Mike & I were given free tickets to see the movie, but I was not asked to write anything about it. I’m doing this just because I liked it enough to share!