Ren MacCormack moves from big-city Boston to a small southern town where life is very different. He lives with his aunt and uncle after his divorced mothers painful death from leukemia. An accident in which five teenagers were killed after a night out shocked the small towns community. The local councilmen and Reverend Shaw Moore reacted to the incident by banning loud music and dancing. Ren stands up to the outmoded ban and in the process falls in love with the Reverends daughter Ariel Moore.
Review
What's the indie director of gritty pulp fare like 'Hustle and Flow' and 'Black Snake Moan' doing at the helm of a '80s teenage movie remake Well frankly we were not quite sure till we caught his updated version of 'Footloose' and realised that director and cowriter Craig Brewer saw something much more within the original that went beyond the regular 'Step Up' 'Stomp the Yard' and 'StreetDance' modernday teendance movies.
Like those films 'Footloose' is about celebrating the spirit of youth through the freedom of movement so expect the characters to speak passionately about how dancing isn't just a frivolous activity or worse still an act of rebellion against authority. But while these other films were simply content to wow their audiences with some spectacular dance moves Brewer surprisingly places story and character front and centre using dance only as a device to either.
Beginning with a toetapping prologue set to a hiphop version of Kenny Loggins' title tune Brewer and his cowriter Dean Pitchford (who was behind the 1984 original) kicks things off with a literal bang when five teenagers are killed in a road accident after a night out partying and most importantly dancing. Among the dead is the son of Rev. Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid) a preacher in the small town of Bomont who believes the act is a test from the Lord and exhorts the local community to put its young people under curfew and ban loud music and public dancing.
Even from these opening minutes it is clear that Brewer's writing possesses admirable finesse and instead of the fire and brimstone we would expect from a caricatured depiction of a Southern preacher we get the deeply personal words of Rev. Moore that ring with the agony and grief of a parent. Into this restrictive environment enters bigcity kid Ren McCormick (newcomer Kenny Wormald) who has returned to stay with his aunt and uncle after burying his mother.
Ren's first brush with the strictures of the town is getting fined for cranking the music in his yellow VW bug too loudly and let's just say that his reputation with the adult townsfolk just goes downhill from there. Those familiar with the original will start noticing the similarities between Brewer's update and its source the yellow VW for one and also the Rev Moore's rebellious daughter Ariel (Julianne Hough) who is not quite the same after her brother's death.
Exchanging tractors in the original for racecars the modernday Ariel still lives on the edge by dating a local racing lout Chuck (Patrick John Flueger) but is immediately drawn to Ren following a clandestine dance session at an outdoor movie theatre. Ren and Ariel's mutual attraction fuels the tension at the heart of the story first between Ren and Chuck as romantic rivals who duke it out in a dirttrack race using modified school buses and then later between Ren and the Rev. Moore who sees Ariel's errant ways as a result of Ren's bad influence.
It takes a while for Brewer to set up these characters and their relationships so expect the first hour that also contains the jealous boyfriend element which kinda falls flat to be less fleetfooted than you would expect. Nonetheless the pace picks up considerably once Ren decides to start a petition to end the law against public dancing which also puts him on a direct collision course with Rev. Moore. The dynamic between these two characters is especially interesting one the father grieving over the loss of his son and the other a son grieving over the loss of his mother and a scene where they come to mutual understanding of their common circumstances is deeply poignant.
But Brewer doesn't forget he's making a commercial product not one of his specialty films so he hasn't left out the obligatory comic relief that comes in the form of Ren's awkwardly shy best buddy Willard (Miles Teller). Deserving of special mention Teller delivers a charmingly goofy performance radically different from his last appearance in 'Rabbit Hole' that is about as endearing as it gets. The hilarity is fortunate for the dance sequences while well integrated into the flow of the story are quite forgettable even the 'angry dance' replicated from the original by Ren at an abandoned warehouse after being wrongfully accused of drug possession. Choreographer Jamal Sims still makes these sequences look good on screen but there isn't anything on display that will make you go 'wow'.
Bland is also the same description that can be used with lead actor Wormald who could very well do with a little more of the film's own advice of cutting loose. Playing Ren all too straightlaced there is too little of the brashness and insouciance in his performance that is required of his character. Hough fares much better the 'Dancing with the Stars' alum absolutely luminous and sexy as Ariel in clothes so tight that 'if you put a quarter in her back pocket you can tell whether it's heads or tails'. Still Wormald and Hough have good chemistry together both of them better dancers than they are actors.
Of course given the uncharacteristically characterdriven approach Brewer has taken with the material one wishes for better lead actors to play Ren and Ariel. Yet there is still much to enjoy about this remake of a generation's classic which is a surprisingly solid movie with strong story and character elements. And though it is true his version veers closely to the original it is clear that Brewer has taken great effort to craft a remake that pays homage to its source while introducing the 'Footloose' revolution to a new generation. It may not get to its feet as often as you would want it to but its spirit of living out loud and cutting it loose is still very much alive.
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