Dirty Dancing has to be one of my all time favourite films. I have watched it so many times and each time I enjoy it just as much as the last time. It hasn't got the greatest of story lines but it has the best soundtrack ever and some absolutely captivating dancing!
The film stars Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey who play Johnny and Baby. These two characters could not be more different from one an other - he from the streets and she from a privileged background - but they end up meeting and falling in love, although with a lot of misunderstandings along the way!
The film is set in the 1950s and takes place at Kellermans which at the time seemed to be the ultimate holiday expoerience - a very up market Butlins type of holiday! Baby is a guest there with her family and Johnny is the dance instructor. Due to a series of events they end up dancing together but this does not go down well with everyone especially as there are rules about guests and staff mixing!
This film does tend to focus
on the idea of the class divide which shows up in everything and especially in the way people dance. There is the more formal traditional dancing for the guests but when the staff are in their own quarters they indulge in a much more steamier, dirtier form of dancing - which looks much more fun!
There is also the theme of sticking up for what you believe in and sometimes having to hurt people you love in the process. This is particularly true of the relationship between Baby and her father who both end up hurting each other in different ways.
There are a lot of different elements that work together so well in this film. As well as the themes I have already mentioned, there is also a fair bit of humour as you see some of the things that the guests are expected to participate in. It's quite amazing to see what holidays were like then with everything being so organised and almost regimented.
What really makes this film, along with the music and the dancing, is the chemistry between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. It seems to start off as a gentle simmer but gets a lot hotter than that as the film progresses and this culminates in their final dance at the end of the film!
I liked the way both played their roles although to start off with it did feel very unlikely that two such diverse characters would get together at all! I thought all the acting was really good and two favourites of mine were Jerry Orbach who played Baby's father (he has such an expressive face) and Cynthis Rhodes who played Penny, Johnny's dance partner. There's also a great character played by Lonny Price, who is Mr Kellerman's smarmy nephew Neil.
I totally adore the soundtrack to this film and all of the way through there are some wonderful, pulsating dance music. Most people will know 'The Time of my Life' by Jennifer Warnes and there are other brilliant tracks like 'Hungry Eyes' by Eric Carmen and 'She's like the wind' which is actually performed by Patrick Swayze. All of this music is so good and so right for this film - I had to go out and buy the CD!
One word aboot the dancing again - it is so hot! The dancers are all superb and there is such a fabulous dance scene towards the end which is made even better because everyone joins in - not just Johnny's dance crew!
Overall this is an absolutely fabulous film. At the heart is a very moving love story and when you add in the excellent music and dancing it absolutely has it all! That is of course if this is the sort of film that you like, It is definitely my sort of film though and as I said at the start it's one I can watch over and over again - and I can always guarantee there will be some bit that will move me to tears.
There aren't that many DVD extras but if you fancy a bit of dirty dancing yourself you can have a tutorial and either learn the man's or the woman's steps. I have to confess that I haven#t tried this - I can't quite imagine my husband wanting to join in either!
At the moment you can buy the DVD on Amazon for only £4.80 which is definitely well worth the money!
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Production Year: 1998 - Drama - Director: Carl Franklyn, Carl Franklin - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Meryl Streep, William Hurt, Renee Zellweger, Tom Everett Scott, Nicky Katt, Lauren Graham
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Production Year: 2007 - Drama - Director: Mike Binder - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett, Liv Tyler, Saffron Burrows, Donald Sutherland, Mike Binder
Its inspired a hit musical. The soundtrack has sold in its millions. And its still, ... more
arguably, the most popular film on Patrick Swayzes curriculum vitae. Most worrying of all, perhaps, is thatDirty Dancingis now more than twenty years old. Nowthatsscary...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
It's the summer of 1963, and 17 year old Frances Baby Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is about to ... more
learn some major lessons in life as well as a thing or two about dancing.On holiday in America's Catskill Mountains with her older sister and parents, Baby shows...
Advantages: Soundtrack, dancing, Swayze in the best shape of his life Disadvantages: Chemistry between Swayze and Grey, some might say the script but it's a classic
Mountainlilly 13.07.2009 ·
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Review of Dirty Dancing (DVD)
![Dirty Dancing [DVD] [1987]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78473997.jpg "Dirty Dancing [DVD] [1987]")
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