Footloose 1984

Hip teen Kevin Bacon moves from the big city to a podunk town in the sticks, where he’s shocked to learn that dancing has been forbidden. The absurd legal prohibition frustrates his fellow high schoolers, but they find other ways to act out. Particularly Ariel, the preacher’s daughter, a would-be angel who rebels against her ultra-conservative upbringing by sleeping around and risking her life in a string of dumb stunts. Bacon’s boundless confidence and earnest manner nets him plenty of friends around the school, and the romantic attentions of Ariel, but also waves red flags in the community. Doubly so when he speaks out at a council meeting and organizes a senior prom, complete with rock music and dancing, at a grain mill just outside city limits.

This one kept surprising me. It skips most traps of the silly, stereotypical ‘80s high school comedy and delivers an impressively thoughtful, level-headed take on the generational divide. Bacon’s character is a smart, personable, even-tempered sort who has no trouble forming lasting friendships and possesses the self-assurance to call out his peers when they posture and front. He pushes his friends to grow and his opponents to think again, shows maturity in tough situations and, goddammit, he really, really loves to dance. Intense, precise, balletic dancing. Especially when he’s all charged up with adolescent rage in an abandoned warehouse. Even the hard line preacher / councilman (John Lithgow), driving force behind the city’s anti-dance crusade, is afforded a layered, sympathetic back story. I wasn’t prepared for so much impartiality in a music-driven PG comedy from the heart of the ‘80s.

While its tempo is up, Footloose is a refreshing change of pace for an era that was flush with shallow screwball sitcoms. Though it provides an easy conflict, a catchy pop soundtrack and an embarrassment of montages, just like many of those contemporaries, its cast is less clichéd and more human. Most of the third act lingers in self-pity, an excessive drag, but it rebounds in time for the big finale and hits the credits at just the right time. Much better than I expected.