Thursday, October 19, 2017

Dirty Dancing 2017 is a reworking, not a remake or reboot, and it's ok

Do you remember Michael Bolton's Timeless: The Classics album? And do you still cringe? There's a reason why classics are classics, and the golden rule is, Don't remake a classic unless you do something different. For example, The Four Tops' original Reach Out, I'll Be There is a classic and unless you're going to do what Joe Cocker did with the Beatles' With a Little Help From My Friends or what Jimi Hendrix did with Bob Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, i.e, rework the original so that you create a new classic, you probably shouldn't bother. With cinema a good role model here is Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. The film is a stone-cold classic of cinema, legendary in its influence and impact. It inspired 'seven swords' books and films of course, but one reworking went on to achieve classic status of its own: The Magnificent Seven. The reworking meant that most of Magnificent Seven's original audience had no idea at all that it was based on Kurosawa's original. 

Both of these classics suffered remakes. The point is, Don't remake a classic, don't reboot a classic either. If you want to touch a classic, rework it.
Dirty Dancing, the original, is seen as a classic of its type, partly for its story, partly for its soundtrack, and partly for the on-screen charisma and energy of the film's two leads, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

If you've seen and loved the original, then Dirty Dancing 2017 can't be considered an outstanding success; but it's a worthy attempt--not a remake but a reworking--not a reboot but a reworking--and a lot better than the critics allow it to be. 

It appears to me that most of the critics were simply looking for a reboot and as I've said above, you can't reboot a classic and you shouldn't even try.

At the very least, Dirty Dancing 2017 tries.

It had something to work with for in truth, there were always two stories in Dirty Dancing. There was the story of Baby and Johnny; but there was also the story of Baby's family. In the original, the family's story was a backdrop, but in 2017 it's developed and brought forward. The reworking is a full 30 minutes longer than the original, and the characters of Baby's sister, father and mother are fleshed out. This fleshing has also become part of the soundtrack, with one song--'They can't take that away (from me)--even being reprised. This is sung in the film by Baby's mother, and then, later, her father. The other song, an early Dylan great, is claimed by Baby's sister. So the screenplay was reworked extensively.

But the soundtrack was reworked too. The original OST sold more than 32 million copies, so even using it was a big risk. The producers of 2017  decided to neither just replay the original nor create a new setlist but used newer, different artists', versions of the original songs. This choice has been applauded in its own right.

So the 2017 producers knew what they were risking and knew also what they were doing. This is a reworking. As a reworking it does, I think, a very watchable job.

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