This past Wednesday, ABC aired a remake of the 1987 movie "Dirty Dancing." My mother is a die-hard "Dirty Dancing" fan and I've come to love the movie just like she does, so we were excited to see how well they could do a remake.
In the original movie, Patrick Swazye played the roll of bad boy dancer Johnny Castle, with Jennifer Grey playing the role of good, daddy's girl Frances "Baby" Houseman. They obviously fall in love and that's really the end of the movie. There's a myriad of memorable lines that my mother and I love reciting and we were hoping they would bring that into the remake.
In the ABC movie, Colt Prattes, a dancer who's starred in Broadway's "Rock of Ages," plays Johnny and Abigail Breslin, best known for her role in "Scream Queens" as Chanel #5, took the role of Baby. Now, the remake stayed true to a lot of the scenes from the original. The watermelon scene was probably the most notable one, along with the water jump scenes. I was, however, disappointed in the fact that the scene where Baby confronts Johnny about her feelings never took place. It's my mother's favorite line and we were hoping it would make it into the remake.
The remake was a bit better with telling stories other than just Baby and Johnny's, like how Baby's parents had a huge fight (which did not happen in the original) and an expanded story with Vivian Pressman, the bungalow bunny. The telling of more stories was nice, but the adding in of a possible divorce between Baby's parents might have been a bit too much.
The extra bits we got to see with Vivian made the story a bit more interesting, considering that she was still married in the original and didn't almost convince Baby's mother to try and leave her father. Changing up the theft story actually worked for the remake, since it kind of cleared up why Johnny would get fired, even after proven innocent; because the watch was found in his room, hinting at an affair with Vivian.
One thing that did not work with the remake was how little rhythm Abigail Breslin has. Even after learning all her dances and probably rehearsing them a million and one times, she still could not move her hips, nor move to the beat of the songs properly. She looked like a fish out of water trying to dance. Sure, she can sing and it sounds nice, but she has to be able to move. I'll give her the dirty dancing at the beginning because Baby obviously hadn't learned to dance yet, but even Jennifer Grey's Baby picked up the dirty dancing and proved she still had it when she was on Dancing with the Stars.
Every person who played in the remake was somewhat capable of dancing and didn't look awkward while doing it, except Abigail Breslin. During the final scene, I cringed too many times at the way she danced; it just didn't seem fair to Colt and all of the other dancers in the movie. I'm sure they could have found someone similar to Colt to play Baby, someone who's an actual dancer and who maybe isn't as well known as Abigail Breslin. Abigail did a wonderful job acting as Baby, because she still kind of looks like a baby, but she did not do a good job dancing like Baby.
The movie wasn't a bad remake and I think you could even compare it to the remake of "Footloose," but you have to cast someone who can dance to play the role of a dancer. And thank God they put in the only line that mattered, even if she wasn't really in a corner when he said it.
