Lambie Mostly Rants About Dirty Dancing

Year: 1987
Why I Bothered To Even Sit Through It: One of the AFI's Top 100 Passionate Films
Slightly Less Harsh Review on Letterboxd: 'Dirty Dancing' Review by Avalanche

Nowadays, this film only seems to be well known for two reasons: the fact that it stars Patrick Swayze and that one line everyone loves to repeat endlessly (you know the one I mean). Admittedly, I am not part of the target demographic of this film, and so there was little chance of me ever actually enjoying it. That means I must therefore at least attempt to discuss the film in a critical and technical sense. Unfortunately, on those two levels I still think it's a terrible film.

The major crime the film has is that there is very little plot going on here at all. What little storyline there is to act as a plot seems to just be one big excuse to show what feels like endless footage of people dancing or learning how to dance. There seems to be more dancing than plot. Whenever something does happen, it feels like it's there in the storyline because it needed to be to advance things along a bit, not because it makes logical sense. There are spates of cliched dialogue, and even some dialogue that isn't is delivered in a way that makes it sound as if it should be.

Many of the characters feel as lifeless as the movie, and to begin with many of the characters that should be grouped as protagonists don't seem like the sort of people I'd like to hang around with. In many places where there should be chemistry between characters, there doesn’t seem to be any. At least there eventually seems to be some chemistry between the two leads by the end of the film.

That's at least one of the positives of the film. For a film that made it to the AFI's Top 100 Passionate Films, there's at least some passion between Johnny and Baby (what an awful, awful nickname). It at least gave the finale sequence some sort of emotion.

The cinematography is perhaps the biggest highlight. Many of the outdoor sequences are beautifully picturesque, and a decent portion of the dancing is well shot. It's an odd thought that a film full of dancing should also have some pretty landscapes or serene shots of people walking along a grassy path at dusk, but it does. More than anything, the outdoor sequences seem to evoke the reminiscent angle that the film was partly going for.

But despite it all, and despite the fact I gave the film a sporting chance, I just always found myself fighting the urge to simply stop watching. Maybe there's more going on in this film than I realised, but if there is I missed it because there was nothing there to engage me. I'm not a fan of this type of film, I'm not a fan of Patrick Swayze not wearing a shirt, and people who know me will sure as hell know I'm not a fan of dancing. If you're into this sort of film and/or dancing (and/or Patrick Swayze, I guess), then you'll enjoy this film. Unfortunately, I just found it dull.