Footloose (2011, movie review)

So I vaguely recall Footloose the 1984 version but I am pretty sure I loved Footloose the 2011 version. Although hard to believe the storyline (that a town could have such narrow-minded views as to see dancing as a sin and as something so negative that needed to be outlawed) in 2011, I found it incredibly engaging. Not because of amazing acting (though Dennis Quaid and Andie McDowell are extraordinary as the tough pastor and his suffering-in-silence wife, the parents of the main girl character), but because of the theme: dance.

Dance and I go way back. I was a rebel when I took up competitive dancing (my parents wanted me to play the piano, and all my brothers and I learned it, but I wanted to forge my own pathway and I danced instead of being a concert-level pianist). The first time I stepped on to a dance floor, it changed my life. I felt completely different. Even though I no longer dance competitively, I can still feel the plasticity of my movements, despite the many years I have left my dance training dormant.

And that’s why I connected so easily to Footloose. Because the battle that Ren (Kenny Wormaid, excellent dancer and gymnast) engaged on to be allowed to dance (and take his new girlfriend to a formal prom) is a battle that just about everyone can relate, at least certainly me. Not because I had to fight anyone to be allowed to dance, but because dancing is such a vital element to his life.

I no longer dance competitively but I do try really hard to go dancing on a regular basis, and to challenge myself taking new courses and learning new dancing styles. Dancing is in my veins, in my life, and Wormaid’s portrait of someone so in love with dance that it allowed him to grow from a youngster to a grown man throughout the course of the movie made me love this incarnation of Footloose.

I’d recommend that you see it, if for nothing else, because the music is contagious and you’ll want to dance at the end of the movie.

Writer/Director Craig Brewer (“Hustle & Flow,” “Black Snake Moan”) delivers a new take of the beloved 1984 classic film, “Footloose.” Ren MacCormack (played by newcomer Kenny Wormald) is transplanted from Boston to the small southern town of Bomont where he experiences a heavy dose of culture shock. A few years prior, the community was rocked by a tragic accident that killed five teenagers after a night out and Bomont’s local councilmen and the beloved Reverend Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid) responded by implementing ordinances that prohibit loud music and dancing. Not one to bow to the status quo, Ren challenges the ban, revitalizing the town and falling in love with the minister’s troubled daughter Ariel (Julianne Hough) in the process.