You Kids There! Stop that Footloose-Cutting!

I love movies. That may sound strange from a guy who goes to a theater, at most, three or four times a year, but I do. I have a healthy DVD collection, stream movies to my computer, and quote from my favorite flicks like Michael Moore quotes from the My First Pop-Up Book of Evil Western Hegemony.

That said, I’m pretty sure that we need to visit the pitchfork and torch aisle at our local WalMart and take a little trip to Hollywood, because things have gotten way out of hand. Ed Driscoll wrote a couple of weeks ago about the upcoming Battleship, a movie based on a board game variant of Bingo that seems to exist only to blow through a multi-million dollar effects budget and showcase Brooklyn Decker’s, err, assets. Okay, sure. After The Smurfs, we all probably have a need to watch a few things explode, so it may just have a decent opening weekend.

But how do you explain the remake of Footloose? I’m sure there’s a movie executive who feels that youth is repressed to the point that only a tousled rebel in a skinny tie can liberate them from their theocratic overlords with modern dance moves and Kenny Loggins music covered by Blake Shelton and Cee Lo Green. I think though, that a brief glance at England and Philadelphia might convince you that the oppressive glower of Dennis Quaid is not the biggest problem facing the youth of today.

I don’t see the sense of it. Footloose was a film of its time, a simple little story of a bunch of kids who wanted more than anything to enjoy their lives just a little bit before they had to grow up. It mirrored the spirit of the country at the time as we moved from the shabby 70s into a far brighter future. More importantly, it was a simple, fun movie in a time when movies didn’t try very hard to be either one.

Maybe the remake will be better than I think, but I doubt it. The director, Craig Brewer, said that he will “put my own Southern grit into it and kick it into 2011”, which doesn’t sound simple or fun to me. On the other hand, it will feature Julianne Hough in cutoff jean shorts, so perhaps all is not lost.