City teenager Ren MacCormack moves to a small town where rock music and dancing have been banned, and his rebellious spirit shakes up the populace.
Co-writer/Director: Craig Brewer
Stars: Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid.
Dondraico Johnson ... assistant choreographer
Jamal Sims ... choreographer
Watched online, ok print.
Even a little worse than the original, Footloose (1984), 5. This time we see the event that motivates the town to outlaw dancing (and lots of other stuff): a car crash that kills 5 seniors. We even get to watch the city council enact the new laws. Then forward to 3 years later...
The dancing is not as good as in the competition/audition/school films, and rightly so. This is just supposed to be kids, er, cutting loose. Even when they do a big line dance scene, it shouldn't be perfect. The film's star is probably a pro dancer (his IMDb bio starts by talking about dancing, and he was 1st billed in the '08 Center Stage sequel), but his movements are deliberately randomized to evoke 'amateur'. Plus the director shot plenty of the dancing from the waist UP. Grrrr.
The preacher's daughter here pulls a different death-defying stunt: standing on train tracks while a train approaches at high speed. Glad I wasn't the engineer blowing the whistle.
Avoid.
According to IMDb editors in 2015, one of the Top 25 Highest Grossing Dance Movies at the U.S. Box Office. Of course, define "dance movie". The list does NOT contain West Side Story ('61), for instance.
Rated 5.9 (42,686)
Paramount & more, dir. Brewer; 5
