Footloose (1984)
Director: Herbert Ross
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Twenty years on, Herbert Ross's teen yarn is already a period piece. It's set at that moment in the mid-1980s when musical sequences in studio films began to be filmed like pop promos. The premise wouldn't pass muster in a Cliff Richard movie. Bacon is the clean-cut but rebellious big city boy adrift in a white, Protestant backwater town where (absurdly) rock'n'roll is banned. He's pitted against the neurotic town preacher (Lithgow), whose daughter (Singer) he promptly falls in love with. Ross, who began his career as a dancer and choreographer, brings plenty of gusto to the material and the performances are ebullient, but this is still a cynical and manipulative exercise with little feel for the teen culture it purports to celebrate.Author: GM
Cast & crew
Director: Herbert Ross
Producer: Lewis J Rachmil, Craig Zadan
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chris Penn full cast
Genre(s): Musicals
Duration: 107 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now