This past weekend, the flashback movie at the Continental was Footloose. This time, the trip to the theater was different from the norm, as I'd never actually seen the movie before.I know, revoke my "Child of the 80s" membership card. Shriek "How can you not have seen Footloose?!" at the top of your lungs. Whatever. It slipped through the cracks. And really, it's one of those movies that you almost feel like you don't have to see. The plot is pretty well-known, coming up in plenty of other pop culture references. And of course, every other person in the late 80s owned a copy of the soundtrack and played the crap out of it.
Anyway, I decided I'd better actually cross Footloose off "the list" and go see it. It was perhaps the most familiar experience I've ever had seeing a movie for the first time. As I expected, I did feel like I knew the whole thing already. Not that that was entirely a bad thing.
It was every bit as cheesy as I expected, and more. And not that that was entirely a bad thing either.
Ultimately, it was a fairly harmless but fun little bit of fluff. I guess it had a "message" as well, though in the context of the movie, I'm not sure whether that can be considered a plus or a minus.
Basically, I left the theater ambivalent on whether I'd actually liked the movie or not, but still feeling like I'd generally had a fun time at the movies. Call that... I don't know.... a B-?
5 comments:
Footloose, like Blues Brothers, Tron, and Dune, is a 1980s film that would never be made by the risk-averse Hollywood of today. Something like Footloose could be made and pushed down our throats (High School Musical), but an exact copy of Footloose would never see the light of day.
I'm sure your ears were happy to hear Kenny Loggins in a soundtrack.
a few weekends ago they had an 80's movie marathon, and I finally saw Wargames. yeah one of those iconic movies I had never gotten around to seeing, and had always wanted to.
Wargames was good but the ending was troubling because you *can* win at tic-tac-toe...I guess the computer would know to pick a corner second when the first pick was the middle, but it had to have gotten that wrong once to recognize not to do it again?
the mole
Re: Wargames... I'm amazed how many keystrokes are necessary to type the words "tic tac toe." Listen to the foley work when Broderick is talking to Joshua/WOPR. Amazing.
If the 1970s was the height of artistic cinema, the 1980s was the height of pop culture cinema. Perhaps I'm just skewed as an almost 33-year-old.
By the way, what is that archaic device attached the Kevin Bacon's belt? Is that some sort of primitive iPod?
Everybody cut. Everybody cut.
That's a doubly funny observation about the Walkman, because as far as I can remember, the only Walkman in the entire movie is during the "teaching Chris Penn to dance" sequence. Kevin Bacon's character never wears one.
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