Fresh and Exciting

best movie i've ever seen.

A Disappointing Continuation

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I have a cousin who gave me a bunch of her VHS tapes and this was one. It wasn't bad but I didn't really love it either. I plan to re-watch it to see it sometime, so I may re-write a review. I think you should also know that Roger Ebert gave it 1 star(out of 4). So, maybe it's not really a guy's movie. I recommend it to girls more than to boys.

This nostalgic look at a time that never was has mousy Jewish girl (Jennifer Grey) about to go off to college but going off with her family to vacation at a Catskills resort and finding love with a sleazy and vapid dancer (Patrick Swayze).Nothing rings true in this story. The mix of vintage music with new music doesn't work. The resort staff that does "dirty dancing" in their private quarters is moronic. The acting is horrid.The narrator waxes nostalgic in the opening, telling of that time before the Kennedy murder and before the Beatles. We then get shown people who also would not have been employed by a Jewish resort. People didn't talk this way in 1963 and they didn't act this way in 1963.Grey plays "Baby" Houseman, a nice Jewish girl without a Jewish name. She's taken with Johnny ... they're always named Johnny ... a street kid who can dance as well as he can mince. Swayze has the sex appeal of cold mashed potatoes.His preening and posturing is supposed to pass for machismo but he's less butch than Grey is. The dancing that wows the fans would get the boot on any local talent show.Caught up in this mush are Jack Weston as the resort owner, Jerry Orbach as the Jewish daddy, Kelly Bishop as the vacant mother, Jane Brucker as the apparently retarded older daughter. Cynthia Rhodes as the knocked-up dancer, Wayne Knight as a comic, Paula Trueman as a geriatric kleptomaniac, Max Cantor as Robbie the seducer, Lonny Price as the smarmy grandson of the owner, and Charles "Honi" Coles as the bandleader.Most of the cars are too old, the hair styles are wrong, and the Catskills resort was actually filmed in Virginia and North Carolina and looks nothing like Upstate New York.The dance ending is ridiculous with Swayze leaping offstage into the audience and gyrating in a group dance, and they all know the steps! Apparently Baby lands her Johnny ... a relationship that should last all of two weeks.

This movie contains one of the BEST love scenes ever filmed. You have to have veins of ice if the cabana/dance/love scene between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray doesn't make your heart race a little. The only other movie I can think of right now with a scene that can move me as much is maybe the elevator kiss scene in Drive. Both just beautifully filmed, staged, choreographed, put to music and delivered.And yes, while this movie is somewhat 'cheesy' in places, there is no denying that is played a huge part in American cinema. The Penny story line, the young love, the family situation, all hot topics the year this was filmed.Lastly, the soundtrack is amazing. Not ONE of these songs feels out of place or superfluous. Just perfect. If I could give it a rating of 20, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'm a guy. An older one at that. I've been watching this movie since 1987. Over and over. I never get tired of it even though I can recite most of the dialog. I'm not sure why but this movie gets to me every time. I saw the play a few years ago in Cleveland too. I have two copies of the movie on DVD. The story isn't that great, the acting is not the best, the music is good but I cannot put my finger on why it's my all time favorite movie. The one I've watched more times than I'd like to admit. Some people don't get it but I do. It's just a great movie and I will continue watching it periodically. Sorry, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!