daniel cohen cuts loose …
Plot: After a horrific car accident kills five teenagers, the small town of Bomont imposes strict new laws for teenagers, including outlawing public dance. When big city kid Ren MacCormack (Kenny Wormald) comes to town, he tries to bring dance back and faces backlash from several of the town officials.
Footloose is a tale of two halves. The first half is putrid … but then it got better. The hardest part for me about this movie is that I just couldn’t get past the concept. Maybe I’m ignorant, and dancing is actually something that’s outlawed in more places then I’m aware of, but in 2011, to make a movie where it’s the central issue does seem a little dated.
And that leads me to my next complaint. It’s clear the film takes place in present day, but I felt the tone of several decades. I felt the presence of the ’90s, the ’80s, and even the ’50s at times. What the hell? There’s even a scene where the town Reverend (Dennis Quaid) holds a sermon complaining about how the internet is evil, and our children need to stay away from it. Really … a rant on the Internet? Look, I get the town this takes place in is established as isolated and off the beaten path, but still, that scene makes it feel like this Internet thing just happened. Come on.
The tone in general is just awkward. The opening is this really up beat and crazy dance sequence, and then it immediately transitions into a car crash. I get what they were going for, but the opening runs a little too long with happy dancing to suddenly get thrown into a head on truck. These shifts in tone happen a lot throughout the film, especially at the very end where it was just stupid.
But what bothered me even more was this lame bus drag racing competition. There’s literally buses exploding and crashing, yet the guys involved are like, ‘Whoa, I can’t believe that just happened. Hahahaha! This is fun.’ You nearly died, and you’re laughing it up?!
For a movie like Footloose, we are going to get more dance professionals than actual actors, which is exactly what happened. Surprisingly, the acting was okay. I’m not saying it’s amazing, but it was fine. The lead guy, Ren, played by Kenny Wormald, was actually solid. When he first steps off the bus, he’s got the big shades, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh here we go, the cliché rebel.’ But he actually has a lot of charisma and likability, despite his Boston accent shifting in and out.
While the acting is decent, some of the other characters are just plain unlikable. The lead female Ariel (Julianne Hough) is way too much of the ‘I’m rebelling to piss off my parents.’ It’s really forced and annoying. But the character who I truly detested was Willard (Miles Teller), Ren’s best friend. This is a problem because he’s supposed to be the goofy comic relief underdog you root for, but I thought he was kind of a jerk, and had too much douchey dialogue that made him very unappealing.
As I said, this is a movie that gets better, but the first half is excruciating. The film is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. If this was a crisp 80-90 minutes, I might have even liked this, but it’s too damn slow. The actual plot doesn’t even start until almost an hour into the film, maybe even more. It just meanders along as Ren gets all angsty about the laws of Bomont, and Ariel runs around rebelling every chance she gets.
In the end, this movie just isn’t for me. If you like dancing and a lot of music, you’ll have fun with this. I even left the theater with a somewhat joyous feeling, despite the agonizing run time. This really could have been edited down significantly. I would have preferred a more hammed up tone, but I give the director (Craig Brewer, Hustle & Flow) credit for playing it straight and being consistent with it. f you ham it up, but also play it seriously here and there, that just makes for a disaster.
Just as a side note … This is rated PG-13, but they sex this thing up as much as they can without showing nudity. It’s not a huge deal, but it bothered me slightly, only because I feel like the movie is geared towards a pre-teen audience.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10 (Passable Entertainment)
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