Synopsis:
Spending the summer in a holiday camp
with her family, Frances ('Baby') falls in love with the camp's dancing teacher.
The Freak's
Rating: A : In 1988, about the time Dirty
Dancing hit VHS, I was 12 years old. In
our small town there were three options where
you could rent video tapes, Tuscola Video, Ben
Franklin and Huck's. Huck's was a small
gas station/convenience store. When you
walked into the store and turned left, the first
thing you saw was video tapes. They were
on the bottom shelf, covered with orange
stickers that said how much it would cost to
rent them for the night. It was on one
visit to Huck's in 1988 where I first saw the
video case for Dirty Dancing. It was
sitting alongside Young Guns, another 80s gem
(they weren't much for alphabetizing back then).
I grabbed both of them and rushed to the front
of the store to see my mom, who had just filled
the gas tank up and was next in line to pay.
I begged for the rentals, pushing Young Guns to
the top of the two cases, hoping she would rent
them without looking. She paid for both of
them, much to my surprise, and I was off to the
movies!
As I
walked out of the store, I felt as if I'd just
robbed a bank and nobody saw it happen.
Surely this was a tape filled with boobs and
potty humor like the Porky's films I tried to
watch at my friends' houses when their parents
were asleep. After all, it had the name
"Dirty" in the title! What I found was one
of the first films I ever truly loved. The
shock was that I didn't love the sex, though
there was surely some eroticism about it that
stimulated my pubescent mind. I loved the
story, the music and the magic of the movies.
It was one of the first videos I didn't want to
return, one of the earliest I remember watching
back to back and no doubt one of the first to
inspire my love of cinema.
Acting is slightly above average here, with some
dialogue incredibly cheesy, but somehow still
delivered well by the cast. Direction is
decent, but the real stars are the story of a
summer love and a soundtrack that is arguably
one of the greatest of all time woven together
into a fantastic movie. I dare say that
this film could be the only film put into a time
capsule for the decade of the 80s and do it justice.
Dirty Dancing is still a reference disc for me,
now on Blu Ray. I watch it now to see the
power that music can have over a film, if it is
properly choreographed with acting and a good story.
Besides, if you're a true romantic like me, I
dare you not to smile during the last five
minutes...mullets and all.
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