Overall Rating
  Awesome: 26.09%
Worth A Look: 47.83%
Average: 7.25%
Pretty Bad: 13.04%
Total Crap: 5.8%
3 reviews, 51 user ratings
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| Footloose (1984) |
by MP Bartley
"Kevin Bacon does a Kung-fu kick. No, really!"
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There's a great moment in 'Footloose' when Kevin Bacon is playing chicken with the school tough guy, with them astride a pair of tractors, as Bonnie Tyler's 'Holding Out For A Hero' blares out on the soundtrack. I'll say that again: Kevin Bacon. Playing Chicken. On a tractor. To the tune of 'Holding Out For A Hero'. You just don't get that type of scene anymore, do you?Kevin Bacon is Ren, a city boy who loves dancing, who is forced to move to Small Town Hicksville, to live with his mothers new love. But in a weird time-warp effect, this town seems to be stuck in the 1950's with all forms of dancing and entertainment banned by the town preacher, Shaw Moore (John Lithgow). But dammit, Ren just wants to dance, and dance he will!
I know what you're thinking, "Four stars for 'Footloose'? Really?". Yes really, because while this may be a film that is bad on so many levels, it's also massively entertaining and gave me more laughs than the two 'Ace Ventura's combined. Whether director Herbert Ross is proud of that is debatable.
Consider the scene where Ren becomes so enraged by all the frustrations of life that he drives off to an empty agricultural factory and just explodes into dance. And I mean it when I say he explodes into dance. You know how in the old Universal werewolf films, the character would stagger about moaning having spasms of pain and anguish? That's how Kevin Bacon dances. Apart from one moment where he does a Tarzan impression and swings on a chain from one high ledge to another. I don't know about you, but no matter how much I may love dancing, I certainly wouldn't contemplate doing something that may kill me.
But perhaps the best scene, and one of the finest sequences ever put to film, is where he teaches a young, slim Chris Penn how to dance. Cue a montage of hysterical dance sequences in fields, gyms and courtyards of Bacon and Penn prancing about to 'Let's Hear It For The Boy'. And when you consider that the scene right before this is in the gym showers with lots of buttocks, naked male bodies and talk of getting "creamed" I'm sure you'll agree when I say that it's the gayest thing since Liberace. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
But despite all this unintentional hilarity, there are flashes of genuine quality. Bacon's talent does shine through, and Lithgow is excellent as the preacher who bans the town's youth from having fun with one hand, whilst condemning the school teachers with the other for taking it too far and burning books. But it's a sign of something strange that the moments of best quality are the dullest moments in the film.Yes, 'Footloose' is certainly a 'bad' film in many respects. But on the other hand, I was entertained from start to finish and laughed out loud on more than one occasion. Just don't tell Kevin Bacon that.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2068&reviewer=293
originally posted: 03/17/05 23:05:52
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2004 Starz Denver Film Festival. For more in the 2004 Starz Denver Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
01-Dec-1984 (PG)
DVD: 28-Sep-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
02-Feb-1985
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