Dirty Dancing (1987)

"Dirty Dancing is "Flashdance" with a triple-digit IQ.  Jay Scott, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"Smart and funny, touching and unabashedly sensual... the sweet sleeper of a hot season.  Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times

Editor's Note It's summer, 1963. Baby, 17 years old and all idealistic innocence, is vacationing with her parents in the Catskills. She meets Johnny, the hotel dance instructor, and is mesmerized by him as well as his dance style. She soon becomes Johnny's prize pupil - in dance and in love. Academy Awards: Best Song ("(I've Had) The Time of My Life").

	Kelly Bishop
	Neal Jones
	Patrick Swayze
	Jack Weston
	Cynthia Rhodes
	Wayne Knight
	Miranda Garrison
	Lonny Price
	Jerry Orbach
	Max Cantor
	Jennifer Grey
	Garry Goodrow
	Jeffrey Jur - Director of Photography
	Eleanor Bergstein - Producer
	Peter Frank - Editor
	Hilary Rosenfeld - Costume Designer
	John Morris - Composer
	Linda Gottlieb - Producer
	Kenny Ortega - Choreographer
	David Chapman - Production Designer
	Emile Ardolino - Director

Headstrong 17-year-old Baby Houseman hardly expects her family's usual summer vacation in the Catskills to be momentous. But then Baby spies Johnny Castle, the resort's dance instructor from the wrong side of the tracks. Johnny's facing a crisis: his dance partner and friend, Penny, is pregnant and has reluctantly decided to get an abortion. This leaves Johnny a solo act -- until Baby agrees to take Penny's place. She has to learn how to dance first, however, and as Johnny teaches her the choreography's sexy, seductive moves, the two fall in love.| But Baby's father believes that Johnny is the creep who got Penny pregnant, and he furiously orders Baby to end the relationship. Baby knows that Johnny's innocent -- and with her feisty idealism and his dance talent, the two will prove to Baby's father that their love is worth fighting for.

"The reason people treat me like nothing is because I am nothing." ---- Johnny Castle [Patrick Swayze]

New York Times
"...Nicely bittersweet....A drive and a pulse that give the film real excitement..." 08/21/1987 p.C3

Variety
"...Some nice dance sequences and a likable performance by Jennifer Grey make the film more than watchable..." 05/20/1987

Los Angeles Times
"...Smart and funny, touching and unabashedly sexual....Grey and Swayze are tough, thoughtful, lovely actors..." 08/21/1987 p.C1

Entertainment Weekly
"[A] slumber-party classic..." 04/15/2005 p.48

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]his '80s classic transcends cynicism to give warm-fuzzies the world over." 03/01/2007 p.46

Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]hanks to a fabulous soundtrack and enthusiastic performances, it's still as much fun as ever." 12/01/2007 p.98

Entertainment Weekly
?[Swayze?s] sweaty, smoldering, swivel-hipped rebel Johnny Castle still comes across as James Dean in snug slacks.? -- Grade: B 05/13/2010

Washington Post 8 of 10
Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Dirty Dancing is Saturday Night Fever with merengue on top, a Flashdance of the Borsch Belt, a razzle-dazzler of a romance set to the sultry sounds of the '60s...Do you love me? asked that music, and young America said yes, grinding out affirmation in dance as erotic as foreplay. Will you still love me tomorrow? the music asked again. And again the answer was yes, as the dancers touched and arched their necks and teased the night...Cynthia Rhodes, a leggy Flashdancer, glides far more grandly as Johnny's partner Penny. She's a polished, hard-luck professional who is sidelined early in the story. And Baby volunteers to fill the void. Johnny teaches Baby to merengue, expressing his contempt for this rich kid with provocative badgering. But Baby's a quick study and her awkwardness turns to agility. Then the whole movie becomes an excuse to watch this pair move, their gorgeous bodies caressed by intimate cinematography...Swayze, who studied ballet with the Joffrey, takes the lead. A dark blond with a heavy, sensual face, he moves with macho grace, a cross of Brando and Balanchine. From the neck up, he looks like a guy who could fix your carburetor; from the neck down he has the body of an Olympian...This odd couple dance to Kenny Ortega's choreography all movie long, so don't expect a lot of dialogue. It's supplementary to Ortega's love-story-in-motion, an abandoned rock waltz with dips we haven't seen since silent movie sheiks. The sound track, with its black and Latin roots, is a pre-Beatles me'lange meant to presage the decade to come. That was the context for the screenplay, according to Eleanor Bergstein, the coproducer and screen writer, who bases the movie on her own dirty dancing days...There's a lot of growing up in this feverish fairy tale, a Sleeping Beauty with bagels. It's precisely directed by Emile Ardolino, who won an Oscar for his documentary "He Makes Me Feel Like Dancing." He, too, is a man who makes you feel like dancing. Dirty Dancing is at area theaters and rated PG-13 because it includes adult situations and profanity. - Rita Kempley