From the moment we decided to begin our film marathon I’ve dreaded the day that I’d have to, for a couple of hours, sit and watch a film that I’ve purposely avoided my entire life. I believe, however, by having such low expectations for this film, that I somehow managed to make the whole experience more enjoyable than I had anticipated. With that being said, I can’t say that the film was actually good. I struggled to understand the “dirty dancing” aspect of the film. I understand that many are passionate about dancing and all of the hard work and dedication that goes into perfecting the art, but the film regularly over-sexualized nearly every character as a means to show the audience how important dance was to the characters. I am aware of how many dances are often portrayed as sexual and romantic, but forcing the over-sexualized agenda of the film on the audience actually made what the characters loved so much less interesting and almost comical. By making every moment of the dances sexual, the audience was never allowed the opportunity to fall in love with it on their own. Due to the fact that I felt the film’s agenda was forced on me, it was almost an automatic response to like what was being fed to me less than if I had been able to climb on board naturally. Similarly, I felt that every line spoken by Patrick Swayze’s Johnny Castle felt forced and unbelievable. It seemed as if he was so passionate about each and every word he spoke and that he had to spew those words violently at his audience. What frustrates me the most about the characters in this film was that so many of them were nearly unbearable at some point throughout the film. Johnny, Baby Houseman (Jennifer Grey) and Jake Houseman (Jerry Orbach) lacked the character to make the audience like them. While only Swayze’s acting was questionable, it was the way in which the other characters were written that turned me off to them. Neal Jones’ Billy Kostecki was the most consistently enjoyable character in the film and this fact (the fact that his role was significantly smaller than the others’) took even more away from the enjoyability of the others. It’s clear that I struggled to appreciate the main story, however, the secondary story (that of Cynthia Rhodes’ Penny Johnson) was far more interesting than anything else that took place in the film. The tone of the entire film was meant to be deep and serious and this aspect of the film was just that. Her story was far more important and her situation was far more desperate than any other part of the film. Penny sold what was happening to her and this portion of the film propelled the rest of the story and was, by far, the most interesting part of Emile Ardolino’s renowned film. Again, my low expectations for this film actually allowed me to enjoy the film more that I thought was possible, but, the film had many flaws. Had I gone into this film blindly, I believe that the hour and forty minutes that I spent watching this film would have been insufferable. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0092890/
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