Footloose

The original Footloose was a fun film, not a great film. It became a classic as the sum of its parts: the cheesy music, the dancing, the story – and Kevin Bacon. Craig Brewer’s new version suffers from the same melodrama and silliness as its predecessor – wait until you see how Ren gets to the famous warehouse dance scene – but you can forgive its flaws because it still has those ingredients intact. And while there’s no Bacon, Kenny Wormald as Ren McCormick – complete with James Dean hair – makes for a dashing rebel with a cause, injecting just the right combination of pained kid and who-cares attitude into the role to turn him into, perhaps, the next big pin-up. He even manages to make line dancing look cool.

Brewer, meanwhile, sticks almost religiously to the original story, the contemporary references occasionally jarring with its old-fashioned themes. Ren now dances with his iPod, the black kids krump in the carpark and the grown-ups worry about the recession. And that’s about where the updating ends. The script, the costumes, the music and the car are virtually the same; only the tone has had a makeover, cranking up the pace to the slick tempo of next generation dance flicks such as Step Up. If the remake’s goal was to turn a classic into an easily digested teen flick, they’ve succeeded. Time will tell if it’s still a classic but if they can make line-dancing look good then Footloose still has a pulse.