48 things the movie “Footloose” fucked up

Saturday night after midnight you have a couple of options on TV. You can pick 1980’s movies featuring the music of Kenny Loggins (more in a later post), soft and hardcore porn, sports highlights or infomercials.

I never really think about. It just seems like a given. I am going to watch “Footloose”.

I don’t know why I still watch these movies. When I was an 11 – 12 year old boy these were “THE” movies, but now they are so ridiculous I wonder how and why they were ever produced. “Footloose” isn’t alone. Grease, Top Gun, Footloose, Breakfast club, Dirty dancing, one of these movies will be on at least once a month, and inevitably I will watch them despite the fact that their mere existence makes me angry.

So Saturday night it was Footloose, the rarer film of the 1980’s collection of shit, it just isn’t on that often. To refresh your memory, a city slicker moves to farm country to live with relatives after some unrevealed unpleasantness/trouble in the city. His arrival sparks a revolution in his town as the right to dance pushes a town to the edge.

Fucking crazy right? This movie got made? What the hell?

Anyway, the city slicker is pitted against a small minded imperialistic preacher who is mourning the loss of a son and living with the shame of a slutty daughter. The internal community struggle produces a “to dance or not to dance” climax in the film. Why the war on dancing? I don’t know, but it seems that dancing leads to fucking and fucking is wrong. This is where they lose me every time.

This town is so fucked up, the kids are a mess and their priorities are clearly all wrong, but I don’t know how they chose dancing as the root of the problem. I feel like driving to this town and running for Mayor. As an outsider to the town, I think I could show them a few more pressing problems and together we could make things right. Vote Ben!

So here begins my problems with the movie Footloose. Please note that every point below should begin with “Why was dancing the problem when…”)

1- Drugs are sold openly in school. Some towns would consider this an issue. Worse still flushing drug evidence down the toilet seems to be the perfect get out of jail free card. Bacon gets caught with a joint, which he received free for some reason (I know give them a taste and they be back for more), and the teacher simply walks away once Bacon flushes it. It’s a high school, nothing has to stand up in court, he would be out on his ass in any other school in the country, but in this dance free zone flushing drugs in front of a teacher is fine. Sorry kids, I can’t condone drug use, but I do like the get up and go of Bacon to flush the evidence. FUCK THE MAN!

2- Sexual harassment is rampant. Dancing or no dancing, the girls are boy crazy, witness Sarah Jessica Parker cat calling Bacon as he walks the hall. There she is openly cat calling a boy in school while she is dating his best friend “Wilber”. Fortunately for Wilber Bacon is hands off because the leader of Parkers gang already pissed on his leg or whatever. Here we see that Bacon’s lady has so little respect for her relationship with her high school drop out boyfriend she openly plans her capture of Bacon the minute he walks past her… in a fucking tie.

Note to every “new kid in school”: don’t wear a tie on your first day. I don’t care what they wore at your old school. Wearing a tie on your first day is only going to lead to bad things.

3- The preacher’s son and his pre-film death are apparently the reason for the lack of dancing in this town. It seems that his death I also the reason for the lack of “Men at Work” cassettes in this town. What I can’t figure out is that the son died in an auto accident. Sure it was on the way back from a dance or whatever, but it was a car accident. So give that a traffic accident was the cause of death wouldn’t you think the town would beef up traffic laws?

Think what you want about dancing, but the kids in this town ride everywhere on motorbikes and nobody wears a helmet. Better still the girls riding on the bikes don’t wear shoes. On top of that problem, chicken races take place on a fairly regular basis by the looks of it (there is more time spent on chicken races than actual dancing) and yet there are never any cops around. In one case a trucker almost dies in a head on collision. Wouldn’t he report the incident to the police?

Note: is it more than a little sad that “men at work” and “the Police” where used in a sad, pun filled conversation of confusion exposing the musical ignorance of this town.

4- There is zero police presence in this town. For a hard assed town the only evidence of police was a traffic stop at three in the afternoon for a noise complaint. Okay, dancing/music, almost makes sense, but where are the cops when the hot girl does her slutty dance with the ghetto blaster outside of the diner? A popular late night hangout seems to be the perfect place to “crackdown” on the dancing problem. If you wanted to solve the problem wouldn’t you send the cops there every night to break up the teenage fun?

5- Alcohol abuse is everywhere. Now no matter what you do teenagers are going to get booze that is just a fact. One of the popular girls is going to be “doing” an older guy and he can get everybody beer. This is true of any town or city in the world. Girls are just better at getting useful mates. However, Bacon/Ren seems to have ready access to beer despite being a minor and a minor celebrity. One night Ren freaks out because of his intrusive uncles insinuations. He bolts out of the house and goes to the rail yard to listen to music and “Dance it off”. While doing it he drinks beer. Where the hell did a high school student get beer in this town? Everybody knew he was the new guy in town, staying at the uncle’s and going to the local high school. So who sold him the beer? In another case, the Preachers daughter danced in public with beer and then went home drunk, and yet alcohol sales are not a local issue, the fucking dancing is. Apparently, local retailers have no qualms with selling to minors and the town refuses to get in the way of commerce.

6- Fist fights are a daily occurrence; bar fights, domestic violence, bullies, boy on girl, girl on boy, girl on truck, 5 on 1, violence is ever presence in this town. However, teen violence is not an issue. The preacher’s own daughter came home black and blue after a beating from her ex-boyfriend (deserved as far as I am concerned. Come on she trashed his truck before he even laid a hand on her), but dancing is still the key point in the destruction of society.

7- A huge current of underlying homosexuality, sparked by the fact that most of the kids in town can’t dance. Bacon’s new friend, Wilber, learns to dance on a hay wagon while bacon claps, laughs and ogles. Pretty gay. Guys don’t teach their buddies how to dance, it’s just a fact. Gayer than that is that Wilber practices to dance regularly alone in tight jeans, a sweaty undershirt, cowboy hat and gloves…gloves? What about the previously mentioned “dancing it off” that Bacon does to relieve stress. GAY. Now is gayness a real world problem? No, of course not, but like I said I am running for mayor of this town. If you want to win an election in the Bible belt, blame gays.

Traffic safety, alcohol, drugs and violence, HUGE gay undertones all non issues, but dancing is a key problem. Well clearly the town is fucked.

So the story and premise are garbage, but the film doesn’t stop there. Couldn’t they have just told the story of a town with a lot of problems that needed a dance, instead of a town that needed real social help, but got a dance instead? I wish this was the end, but this movie was not satisfied being stupid, it pushed to put “Fucking” in front of that stupid review. Because of the complete lack of actual tension the film introduced absurd non-plot points to stir up the tension. These points take the film to all new levels. Can’t be that bad, right?

How about when a train yard is introduced which has become the states epicenter for young poets. Remember Ren bolting out of the house to dance off steam? Well Ren heads to the train yard to see what is in the hearts and minds of the local kids. Of course, before he can read poetry he needs to dance because up until this point there really hasn’t been any dancing. So Ren stops the action to treat us to a very gay, gymnastic heavy, dance routine. When Tarzan/Ren is “spent” he relaxes with a cigarette (he never smokes again) and the previously mentioned “effect” beer and starts reading poetry. No graffiti for this town, the “guerrilla” poetry is written inside of a train engine for some reason. This part of the film is so absurd I don’t know how to take it. The local kids can’t dance so they take out their frustration by going to secluded location, to listen to music and write poetry. Why don’t they just go there to dance? Why poetry? Why is this only mentioned once? Why is there nobody at the “very” popular rail yard when Ren shows up? Why poetry? Why poetry? Why poetry? To understand, or not understand. I have a lot of fucking question.

Dancing is a huge biblical issue, that is a given, but even for a film in the bible belt that outlaws dancing at the bequest of a preacher, there is too much bible. When the preacher “got served” by Ren in a “bible off” in front of the town council my world stopped spinning. Excuse me? Is this microphone working? A fucking line for line biblical battle to see if God likes dancing. Yes it actually happened. Unfortunately for the movies length, Ren’s bitch slap doesn’t work.

The town doesn’t start to warm to dancing until they begin burning books for some reason. It seems natural. The town that hates dancing suddenly rises up one Monday morning and attacks the local library and begins burning its inventory. I’m sorry, I can’t go any further. This is too fucking stupid. When this unspeakable event is combined with the preachers daughter recounting the opening of her legs under the alter, the preacher sees the error of his fascist hold over the town and gracefully allows a dance to occur in a different town he does not control. Okay Boss Hogg, that makes sense. What town in America is run by a preacher? What preacher controls all “danceable space” in 50 mile area? Who gives a shit if the “man from Delmonte says yes” in a sermon. A fucking sermon of all things gets the dance rolling.

Side note: Ren asks the preachers permission to take the preachers daughter to the dance. Yeah, I get it. Hey preacher, piss on you, piss on your beliefs, piss on your town, oh by the way I hope your daughter likes to get pissed on because I have a fetish. Can I take Betty Lou to the dance?

Well the big night arrives and another fight occurs (my god the violence) and then we get it. The money shot, “Let’s dance!”. Minutes earlier….

This town,
this town so anxious to dance,
this town so desperate for the hedonistic ritual of movement to music,
this town puts on the lamest dance the world has ever seen. There are Christmas lights, rice crispy squares, brownies and punch, but nobody dances. Boys are on one side, girls on the other. Awkwardness is literally ruining the night they have written about so often in their railway hobo poetry. Who will save the day? Thankfully Ren takes his new lady for a spin and people get up to move, why I don’t know.

What makes asking a girl to dance less embarrassing after one couple begins dancing? Shouldn’t it be more embarrassing? “That fucker has the balls, why don’t I. I fucking hate Bacon?” If you can’t sack up before Bacon bites into a slow one then you suck.

So the movie ends with some line dancing and we are left wondering if the town has changed for the better? The kids are still all pent up and fighting. Nobody has addressed the issue of dancing in town. Alcohol flows everywhere, except the dance so I don’t know how it could be considered better.

What they didn’t show was the drive home scene, no not for the back seat fucking, for the drug and alcohol related traffic deaths. Obviously those scenes will make the directors cut, but until they do I am left wondering. I wonder if Wilber is okay now that his lady lives in New York and fucks everything that moves. I wonder, I wonder…