Wednesday Movie Night: Dirty Dancing (1987)

  Dirty Dancing probably pays attention to sensual detail almost more than any other romantic movie I've watched. I've never seen so many shots of just hips! Anyways, the movie is about Baby, who at a rich resort with her parents. She develops a crush on the dance instructor, Johnny.  After Johnny's dance partner becomes pregnant with a waiter staff's child, Baby is volunteers to learn to dance with so she can be his partner. All the while Baby's dad warns her to stay away from the dance crowd at the resort, but she continues to let her relationship with Johnny grow despite the protest.
  If you've been around for 23 years like me then you've probably already watched the movie, and you didn't need that premise to know the basics. I didn't see the whole movie till last night though. 80s' movies keep surprising me though. There seems to be a charm about them that is missing from modern films. I ended up really Dirty Dancing, and liking the dynamics between the characters. The movie is a feel good romance, and it's eat up with scenes to fulfill anyone's ideas about an over the top type of love.
   I can see how movies like this have set us up for the fall out in recent times where people are scared of commitments, and feel letdown about how romance really is. The 80s and early 90s were filled with movies about unrelenting, and accepting love. Now everyone is on the search for feeling like Baby, and Johnny, or Lloyd and Diane from Say Anything. These movies capture a very small aspect of love though. There are so many complexities to love that a movie can only capture one aspect of it at a time, but we should remember that movies like Dirty Dancing aren't the whole scope of it.
   I enjoyed the movie a lot more than I expected. At first I wasn't sure what I would think of it, but it drew me in, and I couldn't stop watching till the movie ended. The dance scenes are quite catchy, and it features a wide array of characters that provide a few complexities to the story.