Director : Emile Ardolino
Dirty Dancing was released in 1987 and me here writing this review in 2024. I heard about this movie many years ago but couldn’t give myself much courage to watch it because of the title ‘Dirty Dancing’. I used to have a completely different opinion about the movie before watching it. Music and Dance are two universal languages. As a devotee of music and dance, ‘Dirty Dancing’ was a delightful experience for me, both visually and aurally. Let’s talk about ‘Dirty Dancing’ then.
On a hot summer vacation in 1963, a family goes to a resort/holiday camp where the family always go to. Baby, a seventeen-year-old teenage girl is the youngest daughter of the family. She is with her father (who is a doctor), mother, and older sister. The owner of the resort is kind of an old friend of her father.
Baby is a typical desperate teenager who wants to experience adventure, love, and wants to find out something different from her everyday life.
On this vacation, there are also many rich families like Baby’s in the camp. At the camp, dance classes are like a must-event. There are staff at the camp who teach dance to the guests. The staff lives in the staff quarter at the camp. Johnny Castle, an alpha male, is one of the staff, one of the best dancers working for the camp. Baby somehow gets in touch with Johnny Castle, and a little bit of dancing brings them together.
Baby, in the very first place, feels something for Johnny. She soon finds herself falling for Johnny. Later, Johnny too. The drama begins. From knowing nothing of dance to the partner of Johnny in a dance event, the wheel of events will give pleasure to you.
Now, there are so many iconic scenes in ‘dirty dancing‘. There’s a scene in the lake, when Johnny teaches Baby to perform lifts in the water, or Johnny and Penny together teach Baby to dance, or the scene on the tree where Johnny and Baby practice dance, or the scene in Johnny’s room where Baby says to Johnny “dance with me”, or the classic final dance scene. As the movie is full of great dance scenes, it also has a great soundtrack too. The combination of music and dance in “Dirty Dancing” is unrivaled.
What about the story? I personally like this film. The story may seem a little unrealistic, but who cares? Dirty Dancing is the best in this way. It has some wonderfully beautiful dance scenes with amazing soundtrack. The chemistry between Johnny and Baby is electrical. The energetic performance of Patrick Swayze as Johnny takes the movie to another level.
The movie is like a vacation, it really gives a feel-good vibe, indeed a feel-good movie.