Dirty Dancing: A Review

[What? Shut up! If it has music -- and especially if it has dancing -- then it’s pertinent to this website.]

Now I always knew that this movie was a dance movie, on account of the title. But what I didn’t know until tonight was that it’s also an abortion movie. Its basically Mad Hot Ballroom meets The Cider House Rules. The movie features a pre-nose-job Jennifer Grey as Baby, a rich teen whose family is vacationing at a resort where Johnny (played by the recently deceased Patrick Swayze) is a dance instructor. Johnny teaches Baby how to dance so she can cover for another dancer who needs to get a botched abortion. In the process Baby falls for Johnny and they copulate. He gets fired for it but comes back in the end for a feel good dance party and Baby does a lift.

There were a lot of good dancers (Swayze included), but none of the dancing was good. However, some of the people in the movie could fold themselves in half backwards, with the fold point being in the middle of the back. That’s creepy, but probably helpful in certain situations.

I was surprised when Patrick Swayze suddenly said, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” I knew it was a pop-culture reference, but I guess I’d forgotten it was from this movie. Then I was bugging my wife, “Waitaminute – what does that mean? Was she put in a corner earlier in the movie and I missed it? Is that code for something?”

I found myself thinking: Do these kinds of resorts still exist? I also found myself thinking: I wish I’d gotten to go to Camp Waskowitz. All the 6th graders at Valley View went to Camp Waskowitz, but we moved away in 5th grade, so I never got to go.

In doing my research for this review, I found out that not only was there a sequel (Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights), but a remake of the original is in the works for 2011. The question is, who should play Johnny & Baby?

Here’s some suggestions to get you started:

Harrison Ford & Mena Suvari
Harrison Ford & The Octomom
Eddie Murphy & Eddie Murphy
Patrick Swayze (CG)& Audrey Hepburn (CG)
Alec Guinness (CG) & the blue alien cat-lady from Avatar (real)

Also, the sweet corn chowder from Nana’s Soup House in Fremont is fucking fantastic. I bought a whole tanker of it.