By Herbert Ross, 1984.
Starring: Kevin Bacon, John Lithgow, Sarah-Jessica Parker, Chris Penn, Lori Singer, and Dianne Wiest.
Rating: 8.5/10, 6/10.
OK, so I love Footloose. So kill me. Jeepers.
It’s the story of a city boy who moves to a small town where dancing is illegal, who struggles to put together a senior prom for the high school. It’s cheesy, it’s 80’s, but it’s good.
The writing is actually intelligent, and the cheesiness factor, while definitely present, is pretty minimal. So that’s good. And honestly, it’s just huge amounts of fun to watch. Kevin Bacon certainly helps that funness quite a bit; he scores a 9 on the dreaminess scale (although no one else seems to agree with me on that).
There’s not really all that much to say about Footloose, I guess. Just a ridiculously fun movie, with some vague amount of depth. One thing I particularly like is the fact that Lithgow’s character (whose name I can’t remember...the preacher) is not presented as entirely small-minded and bad. The scene where he stops the angry townspeople from burning "obscene" books in the school library is great.
And another thing—in the montage where Bacon is teaching Penn’s character how to dance, they TOTALLY want to kiss each other on the face.