Footloose Review

Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 10.14.2011

Kick off your Sunday shoes because Footloose is back with a brand new movie. But how does the remake compare to the beloved original? Jeffrey Harris checks in with his review of Footloose.



Directed By: Craig Brewer
Written By: Craig Brewer and Dean Pitchford
Runtime: 113 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some teen drug and alcohol use, sexual content, violence and language.

Ren McCormack - Kenny Wormald
Ariel Moore - Julianne Hough
Rev. Shaw Moore - Dennis Quaid
Vi Moore - Andie MacDowell
Willard Hewitt - Miles Teller
Rusty - Ziah Colon
Wes Warnicker - Ray McKinnon
Lulu - Kim Dickens
Woody - Ser'Darius Blain

I'm not old enough to remember Footloose mania of 1984. The movie broke out the film careers of actors such as Kevin Bacon, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chris Penn who all starred in the original. I've watched Footloose plenty of times. The film was a classic favorite for my parents while I was growing up. I don't consider the movie great cinema, but it is an instant guilty pleasure of mine. At times, the movie is just weird and downright goofy. It is very much a product of the Reaganite cinema years. None of the performances in the film blow me away, but it's an entertaining film with good pop music; and I did enjoy the performance of John Lithgow as the strict but sympathetic Reverend Moore.

Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) tries to dial things up to eleven this time around. Brewer has set the film in the rural Deep South and starts things off after a hoe down of young teens drinking and driving, and inevitably crashing in a fiery death. This prompts Reverend Moore (now played by Dennis Quaid) to enact a strict curfew and no dancing, no loud music, and no partying law in his local community. He has good reasons, as one of the teenagers who died in the accident was his golden boy son.

The rest completely follows the original movie scene for scene. Brewer's script uses much of the same dialogue from the original, so much so that original screenwriter, Dean Pitchford, was also given screenplay credit. Ren McCormack (Wormald) comes to town to live with his extended family, his uncle Wes (McKinnon) and aunt Lulu (Dickens). This time around, McCormack's mother died from cancer. Of course, Ren eventually meets Reverend Shaw's wild child daughter, Ariel (Hough), and they begin a fiery romance. Ren is frustrated by the town's strict laws against dancing and music as well as the antagonism from the local adults in charge, as well as Ariel's loathsome race car driver boyfriend.

The movie is so similar to the original film, so there were little surprises here. Where Brewer does decide to deviate from the original and update the story comes as really weak and uncreative. The scene where Ren races tractors is ditched. Instead, Ren races in a bus in a rather ridiculous and borderline offensive scene. Racing tractors comes off as goofy and weird and not something I would describe as dangerous. But a bunch of moronic, unlikable teens racing around in rinky dink buses around a dirt track with the objective of crashing into each other somehow gives logic to the decision to put strict laws on underage teens in towns. I found the conflict of Rev. Moore a lot more interesting and compelling in the original when he ultimately discovers the errors of his ways and the outcome of his strict behavior and laws on the town. Quaid's performance is serviceable, but not completely believable. It felt more like he was forced to change rather than come to the realization on his own.

The two leads, Wormald and Hough, are spirited dancers, no question. Hough is stunning and easy on the eyes, but her acting and performance . . . not so much. Hough seems to only have two modes in this film -- blank stares and angry hysterics. This makes Ariel a lot less appealing and charming as a character. Wormald does his best and even sports the same wardrobe as Bacon throughout the film. Not that Bacon's performance in Footloose was some sort of tour de force, but Wormald never did anything to make one believe in what he was doing.

The 411: The basic problem with the Footloose remake isn't that it's too different from the original, but too similar. The big departures were seriously overblown and ridiculous. That said, the movie is not offensively bad, and the music is still just as entertaining -- even the country covers of the famous songs. Honestly, I don't see the point in a remake of the film, since Footloose was hardly an original concept. A similar movie with similar themes just as easily could have been made when movies like Flashdance, Footloose, and Dirty Dancing are all cut from the same cloth.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]