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.

Review: Left Behind and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

 HERE'S A TURKEY for Christmas: Left Behind, the movie (2014 version). When I saw the trailer for this movie, the combination of promo and the title made me suspect it was an updated remake of the 1995 novel 'Left Behind' by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. But I mostly dismissed the idea because this movie stars Nicholas Cage. You see, I have a copy of this novel and enjoyed reading at the time it was published. It was an instant classic and went on to spawn a complete series of novels. It's essentially a right-wing evangelical church read, but written well enough to grip you even if you're not usually that way inclined. So, Nicholas Cage? Well, it turns out that Nicholas Cage is the best bit of this movie, but the movie is a turkey in exactly the same way that Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' was a great book but a turkey of a movie. Books work in ways that films don't and vice-versa. 'Left Behind' is thin on action but OTT on its message -- from the Bible-thumping mum and the woman in the airport, to the little touches like the fish pendant in the abandoned car, to the good muslim on the plane who has (obviously) been left behind -- simply because it had to be. The trailer and the film are obviously trying to get their message through to more than just the rapturous (sic) community, but in the end I suspect it's only the faithful (sic) who will be its audience. The average parent who buys it, thinking it will be a good family movie, will wish the dvd had been left behind in the shop.  And that's a pity. However, as one character says near the end of the movie, "This is just the beginning"... as with Tom Hanks and Dan Brown's novels, Nicholas Cage and his co-stars are set up for a series here.


The BBC ran their Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies review under the headline, "Is final Hobbit movie a flop?" The resounding answer is No, I saw it yesterday and it's the most impressive use of 3D that I've yet seen -- the death of Smaug, the dragon, is particularly striking (sic) -- but the problem is that the dragon dies very early on in the movie, Of course, the book couldn't just end there, so Tolkein added the Battle of the Five Armies to follow things to their natural conclusions and tie up all the loose ends, etc; but I was rereading my copy of the novel recently and noticed that even Tolkein ran out of plot steam. After all, war is war and battles are battles; there's a limited number of things you can do with them. The entire Battle of the Five Armies (i.e., 75% of this movie) takes only a handful of pages in the book, and, since Bilbo is unconscious during most of it, it is cursorily summarised in a 'Bilbo was told' paragraph or two. So it's visually exciting, fast-paced, violent (but not Tarantino) and great to experience. But don't expect much of a story.