Footloose (1984)

[Edgy MD]

Big-city boy moves to Bible-thumping backwater. Despite the local bullying, general oppression, and teasing head games of the minister's headstrong daughter, he vows to save the town from itself by campaigning against the municipal ban on dancing. No joke.

One of the Holy Trinity of huge, flashy, stupid, soundtrack-intensive, insanely cheesy dance movies of the Reagan years. Currently free to stream on Hulu.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

It's a hatewatch classic for me. Lots of my high school frenemies loved this unironically and played the soundtrack album at parties and proms in the spring of 84. If you reflexively hated popular things like me, there was a lot of hate.

There's actually good performances by the minister and his wife, and the cowboy sidekick. And maybe even Bacon when he isn't flying around the grain mill like a fruit cake.

The chick wasn't desirable at all. She probably should have wound up back with her abusive boyfriend who by the way Ren could never have punched out.

For a music movie, not that much good music including pukers like Almost Paradise and Heaven Helps the Man

[Frayed Knot]

Never saw it.
Don't remember even contemplating watching it.

[MFS62]

One of the Holy Trinity of huge, flashy, stupid, soundtrack-intensive, insanely cheesy dance movies of the Reagan years. Currently free to stream on Hulu.

What were the other two?
Later

[Edgy MD]

Flashdance and Dirty Dancing, naturally.

[Frayed Knot]

Didn't see them two either.

[Edgy MD]

I will let St. Peter know.

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

I kinda liked it. John Lithgow was good and his character came around. I really liked the soundtrack at the time. Takes be back to my college days. I didn't have too many cassettes, and I couldn't bring my vinyl halfway across the country. But this is one that I had and played the heck out of it on my Walkman.

[metirish]

Probably growing up I liked it, like most American things I thought wow this is cool... Cringe now though

[MFS62]

Flashdance and Dirty Dancing, naturally.

I saw Flashdance and wasn't crazy about it.
I saw Footloose and liked it, but wouldn't go out of my way to see it again.
I saw Dirty Dancing and loved it, and have seen it again several times.
I also loved the dancing in Xanadu (1980)

Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I just noticed that logo in cassette ribbon

[Edgy MD]

Exciting Footfacts and Other Observations!

1) Screenwriter Dean Pitchford clearly threw his muscle around, as every song on the soundtrack album is listed as co-written by him. It strains all credulity to imagine Pitchy shuttling from a writing session with Jim Steinman to another with Cameo and a third with Kenny Loggins and onward, and it is more likely true that Dean the Machine demanded a writing credit as a kickback from artists in order to include them on the soundtrack and the soundtrack album release.

From the artists'/composers' perspectives, at least they got some $$ in exchange for their souls, as the soundtrack album came out before the film, sold a ton, and included seven (SEVEN!) hit singles.

2) Director Herbert Ross had a bunch of hits behind him in the 1970s, but was coming off a big-budget bomb with Pennies from Heaven. He turned down this stupid-sounding script, at which point producers turned to Night Shift director Ron Howard. Opey decided to go to work with Disney to work on Splash instead, and Michael Cimino was given the reins. Cimino was coming off his own big-budget disaster with Heaven’s Gate, and producers grew gun shy when he asked for an extra $250,000 after only a month of shooting, and so they fired him and went back to Ross.

The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t make films with “Heaven“ in the title (or about Harlem, for that matter)

3) Kevin Baconage's character Ren is supposed to be from Chicago, but he inexplicably gets pretty New York-accented in the second half of the movie.

4) This is a great town for an aspiring gymnast, as there is always a cylindrical six-foot bar suspended about nine feet off the ground when you need a makeshift horizontal bar.

5) This town is so hicktastic that they have a ban on dancing, but somehow, they have a high school gymnastics team. And despite no actual bad behavior being pinned to him, Ren’s reputation sinks so low so quickly that he manages to get blackballed off of that gymnastics squad, despite his aforementioned aptitude with horizontal bars. And the tough guys lord his gymnastics ostracization over him. There is no evidence of a football team, but the alpha males somehow gay-shame newcomer guys by NOT ALLOWING them on the gymnastics team?

Is this movie set in Romania?

6) Young Sarah Jessica Parker escapes from the middle of her run of suburban Jewish teen characters to play the sidekick here, but manages to still bring the surprisingly huge volume of hair and nasally busybodiness that were her juvenile calling cards.

7) Kevin Bacon filmed the role of a suck-up college freshman in Animal House in 1979, and a wayward young adult in Diner in 1981, but shooting this film, presumably in 1983, he’s suddenly a 25-year-old high-schooler.

8) I may have missed something or somebody, but I think this film managed to go end to end without a single person of color appearing. Cameo and Deniece Williams bring it on the soundtrack, but the cinematographer colored all of the faces with a single crayon.

9) Say what you will about naming the hero “Ren“ and his love interest “Ariel.“ But the genial-and-solid-if-slow-and-shy hick sidekick is named “Willard Hewitt“ and the BMOC bully is named “Chuck Cranston,“ and I say that is some good name-makin’.

10) You know how teenagers do something bold and reckless and stupid but somehow kinda win respect from their peers in movies? Like in The Program when Craig Sheffer’s character lies down on the dotted line in the road? Or when Christian Slater skateboards underneath a tractor-trailer at full speed in Gleaming the Cube? And then reports start coming out about real-world teenagers imitating this behavior to their regret? I am willing to bet that there was no uptick in teenagers playing Tractor Chicken following this movie’s huge box office success.

TRACTOR CHICKEN!

[MFS62]

What was the source of that review?
Los of research went into those first two points.
Later

[Edgy MD]

I don't know that it qualifies as a review, but the source is my fingertips.

I was able to find an account where the screenwriter explicitly claims he did co-write all the songs. I remain dubious, but maybe I am underestimating the powers of cocaine.

[Frayed Knot]

I'm also dubious about Henry VIII writing GREENSLEEVES (for Anne Boleyn of course) but folks in power claiming publishing rights are nothing new.

[whippoorwill]

Never liked Footloose or the music


And Henry VIII writing Greensleeves has always been an intriguing thought to me.

[Edgy MD]

Footloose Observation #11: While the | I - - IV | I - - - | chord riff of the title track has likely been around forever, the song seems substantially ripped off from "Funk 49" by The James Gang. Kenny Loggins went to #1 for three weeks, but when one rips off Joe Walsh, one does so at one's own peril.

[MFS62]

but the source is my fingertips.

I thought it might have been.

Later