Gotta Cut Loose

This week I'm continuing my quest to catch up with my peers and watch all of the movies that were (according to everyone's exceedingly judgey reactions when I say I haven't seen them) supposed to have been major parts of my childhood.

I was actually super excited about this one. Moreso than any of the others that I've watched thus far. It's got dancing, a killer soundtrack, and it was an important enough film to have spawned a remake for Julianne Hough to ruin. 

I mean...I'm already judging the bowling shoes...

I tried to give it a chance. I really did, but I just couldn't with this movie. At first I chalked it up to being distracted while I watched it. I was much too focused on picking out a new dress and wig on Dragopolis (the RuPaul's Drag Race app) to really concern myself with Sarah Jessica Parker's permed hair shenanigans. 

After my second viewing today though, I'm calling it. I'm not into it.

First of all, all I heard from you people was how dreamy Kevin Bacon is in this movie with the sexy dancing and the pants so tight that they're verging on obscene. 

How is it that 25 year old Kevin Bacon looks older than 55 year old Kevin Bacon?! I was concerned for his hips in some of the more physical numbers.

Ren is a pretty f@%#ing cool name though.

The movie opens in a church where a little boy does a spot on reenactment of me every damn morning when my alarms go off.

Waking up is awful. 

Our two leads spot each other during the reverend's (pretty overdramatic) sermon, and Ren's interest is piqued by the beautiful girl across the sanctuary...

Ariel, on the other hand, avoids eye contact and looks around as if she's just farted and is needing someone to pass the blame along to. 

So this is clearly shaping up to be an epic story of star-crossed love.

Ariel peaces out after church without so much as a friendly greeting to the (I guess he's supposed to be) cute new boy in town. She hops into the car with her girlfriends and they talk about teen pregnancy, diaphragms, and their boyfriends' sexual stamina (*gasp* but you're a preacher's daughter) until the third part of modern cinema's least likeable love triangle pulls up next to them in his truck.

I'll admit it. The big truck with the antlers on the top kinda did it for me (even though he's obviously over compensating for something). 

Ariel shows off how big her lady balls are by putting everyone's lives in danger jumping from her friend's car into Chuck's (the d-bag in the flannel) truck while they both speed down the road towards an oncoming semi.

After narrowly avoiding turning herself and all of her friends into a gruesome Driver's Ed Video (Blood on the Highway II: Ariel's an Asshole), they end up at soda shop where they put in an illegal and dangerous cassette tape copy of Dancing in the Sheets, and there's a lackluster dance party amongst the other dance deprived teens. 

Now maybe I'm judging this impromptu group dance a bit too harshly, but after you've experienced three hundred gay men stop in their tracks, squeal, and get the f#%! down to Call Me Maybe in the middle of a Pride Festival, your standards are set pretty high for these types of things.

Meanwhile Ren is having just a terrible time trying to fit in. He listens to rock music (in his super badass yellow Volkswagen Beetle), wears a tie to school, and doesn't own a single cowboy hat.

Plus he's a 57 year old high school student...so there's that too.

He really steps over the line one day, though, when he has the gall to talk to back to Chuck.

It was apparently the worst thing that anyone has ever said to anyone.

I don't really get it. I've been accosted by idiot rednecks from the windows of bigger trucks than this, and they didn't stop at "pansy." Also, I'm pretty sure I was called an asshole like twice already just today.

Straight boys are so sensitive. 

So that turns into a whole thing where they have to play chicken on some tractors now. It's pretty dramatic. They stare each other down from their respective farm equipment, anxiously awaiting what is sure to be a terrifying (and incredibly low speed) show of the size of their testicles (how many ball references in one blog post is too many?). In what I'm anticipating to be the super intense climax of of the whole scene, Chuck reaches down and pushes play on his boombox.

And Holding Out For a Hero starts playing loudly...

Of all of the songs he could have picked to pump himself up and psych Ren out...he went straight to Bonnie Tyler? I'm beginning to suspect that some of this rage is stemming from just a touch of repressed homosexuality.

In an impressive show of bravery (his shoelace gets stuck on the gas), Ren wins. Everyone is pretty excited, especially Ariel who is not interested in dating someone who can't even win a simple game of tractor chicken. Literally the next day she's hurling herself at Ren.

Clearly, she's marriage material.

Somewhere in here, Ren gets fed up with all the bullshit and just needs to dance it out.

Jeggings seem like a weird wardrobe choice for the town's newest bad boy rebel.

This is about the time that I started really losing interest. There's all this stuff about how sinful rock music, liquor, and dancing are (which, to be fair, I actually know to be true from witnessing the goings on during quite a few ill advised end of the night visits to Red Rocks).

Which reminds me...Pride is coming up.

Ren won't stand for any of that nonsense though and decides he's going to throw a dance for the senior class. All he has to do is get the laws that ban dancing lifted. He and all his new friends (the tractor thing turned him into a pretty righteous dude amonst his classmates) show up at the city counsel meeting and he makes a plea to the counsel members (including Ariel's minister father).

The whole thing gets a little church-y at this point. Ren reads a bunch of Bible passages all declaring how wonderful and not sinful dancing is, and just as you think he's won the argument, they all vote him down...because you can't fight crazy religious types by pointing out that maybe they don't entirely understand their own religious text. Pointing out the idiocy of their arguments just makes them stronger and more adamant about your place in hell.

Turns out the town can't stop them if they throw the dance outside of city limits, so that's what they decide to do. All Ren needs to do is get the good reverend to change his mind so he can take his horrible new girlfriend to the prom that they're throwing in a old warehouse by the sketchy train tracks. It's apparently super easy to change his mind, because they only talk for like two minutes, and all of a sudden everything is fine, and no one is sinning.

Don't push your luck though, gurl, put away your whore shoulders before your dad sees and puts you in a burqua. 

The senior class bands together and there's a whole montage of them decorating their warehouse for the dance.

They do a pretty great job covering up the fact that their precious senior memories are going to be made in a freaking warehouse, but all I kept wondering was, "Who the f#%! is paying for all of this?!" Twinkle lights and balloons aren't free, and I'm not sure when they would have had time to do fundraising. They only just found out about the dance like 27 minutes ago.

When the dance starts everyone is standing around staring at each other...because not only are high school kids super awkward, but dancing has been illegal for five years. Does anyone else see the flaw in this plan to throw a dance for a bunch of gawky teens from a town that's basically Amish?! Where would they have learned to do the Electric Slide?

Plus sober dancing is just the worst.

Ren shows up and gets the party going though, and all of a sudden everyone is a professional dancer who is having more fun than anyone has ever had.

And it freaking rains glitter!

Seriously! How are they affording glitter rain?! Glitter ain't cheap. Also, how is this not getting into anyone's eyes? I didn't realize this was a thing that people did for dances! I might have actually sold a couple magazine subscriptions instead of just making my parents pay for my portion of the fundraising if I'd know that a glittery wonderland was an option.

So...that was Footloose. 

Overall, I'm pretty underwhelmed. The only redeeming moment occured about an hour into the film when they decided to bring butts into the storyline. That's when we met my favorite character in the whole movie.

At least I think this is the first time we meet him. I don't really remember him from anywhere else in the movie...but seriously...

dat...smile.