This is a dumb movie about dancing aimed at teenagers. It’s full of melodrama, immature behavior, well worn teen movie tropes, and lots of dance numbers. The characters think about, talk about, and care about dancing far more than anybody in the real world. It’s absurd. There are professional dancers who don’t spend as much time obsessing over dance as these small town kids do. Every time somebody breaks into a big dance sequence, it plays as completely ridiculous. Also, this movie is a remake. Footloose already came out in 1984, it had Kevin Bacon and a huge soundtrack, and people loved it. People still watch it today. This movie really has no reason to exist, and a lot of people are going to outright dismiss it without ever even giving it a chance.
But those people are going to let their prejudices keep them from seeing something that is actually surprisingly decent. Beat for beat, scene for scene, this is pretty much an exact recreation of the original Footloose; it doesn’t have any new ideas of it’s own. But unlike most remakes that are so poorly executed they make their source material look bad, this new version of Footloose actually matches the original in every respect, and it even betters it in a few as well. While this is most definitely a stupid movie about dancing aimed at teenagers, I’d say that it’s probably the best stupid movie about dancing aimed at teenagers I’ve ever seen. Almost uniformly it avoids all of the pitfalls of recent teen movies. It forgoes all of the modern sensibilities that make today’s teen films so contemptible and instead creates something far more... pleasant.
Footloose goes through all of the usual story beats you’d imagine a movie about coming of age teens struggling against an overly oppressive group of adults would, but it presents them with a much kinder heart than anything I’ve seen in a while. We get the typical protagonist of the new kid in town who stands out like a sore thumb. Here his name is Ren (Kenny Wormald) and he’s a kid from Boston who finds himself relocated to a small Texas town. You would imagine that he runs afoul of a burly cowboy type who gives him a hard time, and he does, but the first one he bumps into at school (Miles Teller as Willard) offers his hand for a shake rather than his fist for a punch. There are two groups of kids coexisting in this small town, the hip hop crowd and the country crowd, but we don’t get a single scene of racial tension. Everybody plays nice. Sure there’s the group of drunk jerks who serve as the antagonists, but they make up about 5% of the film’s characters. In these modern movies the jerks make up about 90%, with the protagonist and his or her two friends being the only people who aren’t completely evil. Footloose may be a story about dancing, but it’s a story about dancing populated by human characters, not by soulless archetypes engaging in behavior that panders to the lowest common denominator, and I found that refreshing.
The main reason this version of Footloose is an improvement over the original is the performances. You might be thinking to yourself that this opinion is asinine, because the only things that really stand the test of time in the original Footloose are the performances, but yes, I think everybody here does even better. First, let’s start with the kids. Kenny Wormald is our protagonist and Julianne Hough is the wild child he falls for, the troubled preacher’s daughter. Both of these kids are professional dancers, not professional actors, and I was expecting them to be horrible. That they aren’t, and that they are in fact quite good, was a surprise to me; a huge one and a welcome one. Wormald is charismatic and believable delivering lines, I would even say he’s a match for what Kevin Bacon did with the role, but the advantage he has over Bacon is that he can really dance. There’s no trickery necessary this time around, you can just keep the camera on this kid as he very naturally and very believably dances. And Hough, here’s a young woman who could get by solely on her looks alone, but instead of just being a pretty face she really brings it with her performance as well. I found her to be warm and vulnerable, even when she was acting like a shit. I can think of at least five mainstream actresses off the top of my head that never look as natural on the screen as Hough does here (and she’s certainly better than Lori Singer was in the original), so she should have plenty more opportunities coming her way from here on out.
The supporting performances are all great across the board too. People remember John Lithgow as the minister from the original very fondly, but I think that Dennis Quaid bests him here. Quaid is less bug eyed hellfire and brimstone and more of a complicated, three dimensional figure. You never get the sense that he’s being painted as a villain, he’s always a good man trying to do his best; even when he does something crazy like votes to outlaw dancing. Chris Penn is one of the big bright spots of the original as Ren’s goofy hillbilly buddy Willard, and the highlight of that film is probably the sequence where he learns to dance. I thought his replacement would certainly be a big letdown, but I was surprised that Miles Teller matches Penn in charm and likability, and once again the learning to dance sequence comes off as the high point. Throw in a couple of beyond solid actors in Ray McKinnon and Kim Dickens playing small parts as Ren’s aunt and uncle, and you have a really strong cast assembled. Way stronger than you might imagine this material warrants.
Don’t get me wrong though, this is still Footloose. All of the embarrassing stuff is still here. The angry dancing inside the warehouse still happens, and it’s still ridiculously goofy. The brawl outside of the dance still happens, and it’s still a hilariously lame fight sequence. There’s still a version of the tractor race, and it’s still too ridiculously life threatening an activity for teenagers to be casually engaging in. All of the things that make the original Footloose a guilty pleasure apply here as well; they just happen with a lighter touch, and less dated fashion, so it’s not quite as cheesy. Most teenage girls will love this. People who have a soft spot for the original will get a kick out of seeing what these new kids have to offer in their telling of the story. Those who hate the idea of seeing a movie about dancing, sure, they aren’t going to get much out of this. But it would be a shame if this one got dismissed unseen as bad filmmaking. Director Craig Brewer does know what he’s doing, and he surprised me with how much I could like a remake of Footloose, for sure.
One thing that the original does have over this remake is its soundtrack. The Footloose soundtrack was huge in the 80s, it contained multiple pop songs that became billboard hits. It’s a soundtrack that still lives on and gets play today. If this new Footloose could have matched it, could have put together a similarly successful soundtrack of pop songs from 2011, then it would have not only made the movie better, it would have separated it more from its source material. It would have made this film less redundant, less an obvious grab for nostalgia bucks. Instead we just get a soundtrack of covers and slight remixes from the 84 version. I can see why they did it, the Footloose soundtrack is tried and true, and fans of the property would have been miffed if they didn’t get to hear the title track or “Let’s Hear It for the Boy”; but going back to those old songs makes Footloose a movie that takes no risks. It never falls flat on its face, but it never gives you a reason to remember it either. Despite the fact that I think this 2011 version of Footloose is a little bit better overall, in 20 years people will still be watching the 84 version to get their semi-ironic pop filmmaking fix. And this carbon copy, it won’t be thought of as anything but a footnote past the first few weeks it gets released on home video. If this new film committed any sin, it’s that it simply forgot to cut loose.
