Footloose 2011 REVIEW
About a month ago I went to go see Warrior, a manly tale about two brothers whoare forced to settle their differences by fighting in a cage. As I was watching
the previews and wondering if I should go ahead and get a refill on
my popcorn, I saw the most God awful movie trailer I have ever seen in my life.
The only good thing about the trailer was that it featured Wild and Young by American Bang.
The Most God Awful Trailer I've Ever Seen
MTV was making a movie about a small backwoods town that outlaws rap music
... or something.
I was halfway through a scathing text to my roommate when the title popped up... FOOTLOOSE
Huh? The movie with Kevin Bacon?
Seen here ruining a franchise
They're redoing it? Intrigued, I decided to see if the worst movie trailer I
had ever seen would become the worst movie I had ever seen. I would like to
point out that I have never seen the original Footloose (Somehow) so I have no
basis to compare it to. The remake is directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow)
so I'm sure at some point it will feature a black man climbing up out
of oppression to affect the lives of all those around him and subtly
make fun of Southerners.
"If you liked Black Snake Moan look stoic and uninterested in what I'm saying."
The movie starts off with shots of feet dancing. There are more feet in the
first scene of this movie than a porno directed by Quentin Tarantino. There
is also a shot of a woman gyrating her hips while copious amounts of beer is
overpoured out of her cup, an offense punishable by death in the South. Then a
car full of teenagers seemingly drunk and on the verge of passing out from dance
exhaustion crosses into the oncoming lane when the driver begins making out with the woman in
the passenger seat. Naturally, an oncoming truck hits them killing everyone on board.
Then I remembered this was not the new Final Destination sequel.
Instead of urging police for a stricter enforcement of the underage drinking law
or banning making out in a moving vehicle, dancing is outlawed in Bomont,
Georgia. No, I'm not making that up. This is mostly thanks to the urging
of the town's reverend, played by Dennis Quaid.
Deploy the sharks!
In the next scene we're treated to a stock car race and introduced to Ariel, the
preacher's daughter, who's been on quite a rampant tear of alcoholism,
making out, wearing red boots, and DANCING since her older brother was
killed in the car wreck. We also meet her main squeeze,
Chuck motha fuckin' Cranston! The greatest dirt track driver in all the land!
After winning his race, Ariel hangs out the window of the car
while Chuck Cranston slowly drives a victory lap. This is the most dangerous thing
anyone has ever attempted according to Ariel's friend Rusty, a Puerto Rican
living in rural Georgia, who opts to cry and drive home without her friend after
telling her what a loose cannon she's become (But immediately forgives her the next day).
Soon enough though, Chuck Cranston is putting the moves on Ariel who admonishes him,
"Why so fast?" and somehow his response does not have anything to do with
the fact that he is a stock car driver. He says something bad boyish
and Ariel gives up her virginity in the way every Southern woman dreams of...
in the back of a box truck on the hood of a stock car.
"I am young, confused, and vulnerable... take me."
Everything was going according to plan and then... Ren McCormack comes to town.
Ren, played by Kenny Wormald, is meant to channel the dark cool broodiness of
James Dean but comes across like Marky Mark imitating Dylan from 90210. This
kid wants to be James Dean so bad the man's corpse is filing rape charges.
Apparently James Franco was too busy studying for his PhD to play
this part (Really).
Seriously?
Ren is a troubled teenager raised in Boston who has come to live with his Aunt
and Uncle in Bomont after his mother passes away from Leukemia. Somehow, despite
the fact that Wormald is actually from Boston, his accent sounds wicked fake.
Ren is an expert at dancing, auto-mechanics, and gymnastics... what?
I don't know either
We first learn that Ren is a master mechanic when he fixes up an old Volkswagon
Beetle from scratch, rewires the sound system into a stadium speaker, and then
begins joyriding around Bomont blasting Quiet Riot. While looking around the garage,
Ren finds the album Metal Health which somehow instantly downloads to
his ipod and he enjoys despite the fact that he is from Boston,
listens to rap, and that it came out 11 years before he was born.
He is pulled over and given a ticket for playing music too loudly and
begins to think something is stinky in Bomont.
You sure do talk funny, fella.
I talk funny? Have ya heard yaself?
Friends for LIFE
Soon after arriving, Ren befriends Willard, a walking parody of how the rest of
the country views people in the South. Willard informs him of the dancing ban.
Now, I grew up in a rural city. They're not that large. At this point I commented,
"Why don't they just drive 5 miles out of the city limits and dance their little asses off?"
Spoiler alert- That's exactly what happens.
...you fucking with me?
Ren also gets a job at the local cotton gin in rural Georgia, which is somehow
owned by a black man (Because Craig Brewer is an artist). Despite the ban on
dancing, all the local kids go down to the old drive in theater where after
the one police officer in town is called away on duty they loudly begin playing
a David Banner song and twerking. For those of you who have never been to
a club, dancing is only done two or three people at a time while a large group
of onlookers surrounds them. Ariel wants to join in on the festivities but
Chuck Cranston only dances horizontally on the hood of a stock car so she ends up
rubbing her ass all over Ren in front of her father, Reverend Moore,
who just happens to show up at the drive in alone on a
Friday night (Presumably he was meeting a little boy).
Ren also gets in trouble at school after a librarian sees him with a marijuana
cigarette given to him by the town stoner. Despite the fact that the evidence
is flushed down a toilet, Ren is summoned before a sheriff and the principal
and given a stern talking to. Overcome with frustration, he goes to an empty
warehouse and lets out his aggression the only way he knows how...
by performing the high bar, interpretive dance, and taking one sip of a beer he was
somehow able to purchase despite the fact that he is underage and has no friends
in a town where five high school seniors were famously killed drunk driving.
And I finally think Hot Rod is funny
Ariel arrives at the warehouse to find an angsty Ren, so she takes him to an
abandoned train car graffiti'd with random quotes, drawings, and lyrics from
REO Speedwagon songs that the local kids call, "The Yearbook". After Ren
refuses to be a pawn in her game against Chuck Cranston, Ariel attempts to
commit suicide by standing on the tracks with an oncoming train and almost
lost her leg like Tommy (Who played piano like a kid out in the rain) but
was saved at the last moment by Ren. At this point I thought for sure that
Cowboy Troy's I Play Chicken With A Train would start playing but then I
realized that Big and Rich would never allow one of their songs to be in this movie.
Hey! Isn't that Nate Brockell?!?!?!
Now Chuck Cranston starts to figure out that Ariel has the hots for Ren so he
decides to settle things the only way a Southern boy knows how... by
challenging him to a figure 8 race in school buses that look like they came
off the cover of a Meatloaf album (I'm told this actually makes slightly
more sense than what happens in the original). Now, apparently they race
these buses every Saturday but somehow... the keys are not locked up.
Somehow... a bunch of high school seniors are able to drive school buses without any CDL training.
Somehow... without having ever done it before... Ren wins.
And somehow... despite the fact that three out of four buses are crashed and catch
ablaze the fire department nor police are summoned and no one ever mentions this again in the movie.
At this point, Ren decides to take his gang to Atlanta and show them what real dancing
is all about (Despite the fact that he has never been to Atlanta before) and somehow
knows an incredibly complex country line dance while Big and Rich, one man who is
almost 40 and a man who is over 50, sing a song about fake ID's. It's about a young
person's need to commit criminal impersonation to gain entry to a bar so they can... see a band? Right.
Wait... Big and Rich did record a song for this? Oh yeah, they're out of money
and irrelevant now. We also learn that Willard doesn't know how to
dance and that if you hit a man in a bar in Atlanta the bouncers will never arrive.
On the way home they drive across the bridge where the accident happened and
regrettably, another one doesn't occur.
Then it's time for another montage. Ren decides that Prom must happen and makes a
petition for the townspeople to sign and decides to teach Willard how to dance to a
terrible cover of Let's Hear It For The Boy. They even have the scene from every
movie where a white person goes into the ghetto, at first is unaccepted, then is
shown how to dance and becomes beloved in the community
Except that in this movie the ghetto is rural Georgia
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Rednecks, Ariel breaks up with Chuck Cranston. He doesn't take
it well and calls her a slut. She hits him and he knocks her down and tries to leave
at which point Ariel grabs a pipe and starts smashing the headlights and windows out
of his truck. Chuck Cranston, merely trying to defend himself from an armed
assailant, punches her in the face which somehow makes him the antagonist in this
movie. I'm not sure why. I wanted to punch her in the face the entire movie.
Hell, even her dad ends up hitting her.
Oh yeah... upon arriving at the church, Reverend Moore sees her busted face and assumes Ren did it,
valiantly threatening to kill him because nobody hits his daughter... except him
Ariel tells him it is just like him to blame Ren for everything, like he blamed everything on
Bobby, her dead brother. And in probably the most horrible scene in the movie,
she tells him how lost she's been since Bobby died. I have seen better
acting in music videos. She also tells him she's not a virgin and he
slaps her, which saved the whole scene. Then the Reverend's wife (Andie MacDowell)
gives him a stern rebuke for the way he's been acting since their son died. He smacks her too.
Just kidding...
Or am I...
Ariel meets up with Ren and gives him her Bible
And her body
Then it's time for the big council meeting. Ren gets up and launches into his
argument but the council doesn't give a shit how many signatures his
petition has on it. Then, he asks everyone to take out their bibles (Only an
old black lady does). He quotes several passages about dancing and how it
rejoices the Lord but Reverend Shaw only knows about the spiritual
corruption of dancing. Clearly he has seen Step Up 2 Da Streets. Ren's
request is denied faster than a Lindsey Lohan audition.
Somehow, despite this clever T-Shirt...
While at work the next day, Ren's boss tells him that his Cotton Mill is over
the city line and technically is part of Basin, GA. Why not have the dance
at a dangerous industrial plant? Ren then goes into the church and eavesdrops
on the Reverend, who is rehearsing his sermon. Reverend Moore notices
him sitting in the back and momentarily mistakes him for his dead son.
Ren informs him that they will be having the dance at the Cotton Mill. Fuck him.
And he wants to take Ariel as his date. Fuck him harder.
He promises to be respectful to her and tells him that even though
the dance means a lot to him, his daughter means more.
...Fuck me?
That Sunday Reverend Moore gives his blessing for the dance and in another
fabulous montage they begin cleaning up the Mill for the big prom. Willard
and Rusty arrive and as they are walking in are accosted by Chuck Cranston
and his gang of hoodlums! Ren and Ariel come outside for fresh air and see
the fight and Ren uses his dance/mechanic/gymnastics skills like a true
mixed martial artist. Even an old black man gets in on the beatdown. Then
they return inside where Ren yells, "Let's dance!" and they shoot confetti
out of a Cotton Gin while everybody boogies to Blake Shelton's horrible cover of Footloose.
Fin
All in all, I liked this movie. It makes no sense and there's lots of things to make fun but I'm told that it's almost a shot for
shot remake of the original down to even most of the music (Including a badass cover of Holding Out For A Hero )
so that made a lot of the bullshit make more sense. This actually made me want to check out the original
and watch Hot Rod again. I will give it a rating of 2 Not-as-gay-as-I-thought-it-would-be's.
Tyler Bagz is an independent filmmaker, mechanic, and gymnast.