Dancing Down in the Dirty Dirty

This past weekend I watched Dirty Dancing for the first time. It was recently given to me as a gift so I am now the proud owner of the Ultimate Edition which is 2 discs of who knows what. Disc One is obviously the film but what the hell is on Disc Two? Bonus features as far as the eye can see I guess. The film looked gorgeous in wide screen and I don't know why I waited 21 years to see this masterpiece of nostalgia. I truly enjoyed it more than I thought I would but had a few thoughts about the experience:

1. When people find out you haven't seen Dirty Dancing they absolutely lose their shit. "You've never seen Dirty Dancing?!?! How can that be possible?" is a pretty typical response. I don't get this comment when I tell people I haven't seen Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind or Kingpin but somewhere along the line I missed the mandatory screening of Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze's hot young bodies grinding on each other. One of my few regrets, I assure you.

2. Not enough dirty dancing. I thought this movie was going to be wall to wall bumping of semi-clothed uglies but most of the dancing in the film was tasteful and well rehearsed. As far as I could tell there were only 2 scenes of true dirty dancing but even those scenes paled in comparison to the horrors I witnessed at my middle school dances. Some people learn the birds and the bees from their parents or books or gym teachers forced to put in a semester of Health classes to fulfill their requirements but I learned all I know about knocking boots from nameless 8th graders writhing on the floor of the all purpose room the the sounds of Salt N Pepa.

3. The soundtrack was mostly great as it was filled with scorching doo-wop and soul songs from the sixties but once in a while an overproduced, synth heavy 80s track would pop up and ruin the mood. Coming of age films set in a certain period of time should only feature songs from that era so the viewer can suspend all disbelief and fully supplant themselves into the movie world. The dance scenes set to the Ronettes and the Five Satins make sense and work well but then a giant piece of 80s cheese smacks you in the face and risks derailing the film entirely. The modern (at the time) gems include such classics as Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes" and Patrick Swayze's "She's Like the Wind" but nothing touches the horrendous and unavoidable "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" by Righteous Brother Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. It's an utterly execrable tune even out of context but as a soundtrack for the final scene it is inexcusable. Even worse, Swayze's character Johnny Castle mouths the words to Baby as they dance together. So we're to believe Kellerman's has hired some time travelling DJ who has brought the freshest sounds from the future back to 1963? Hardly. I guess the badass dancing Swayze showboats is supposed to make us forget about the incredible logic gaps but I found it very off putting. I also hated that they used a 10 minute Latin horn remix of this atrocious song to close out what was an otherwise enjoyable film. It was almost as embarrassing as the Judd Nelson dance scene in The Breakfast Club but not quite.

I'm glad I finally saw Dirty Dancing and can get all the disbelievers off my back. I will now cross it off my list of films that everyone else but me seems to have seen already. Next stop: Caddyshack.

And now for fun, MST3K's classic "Patrick Swayze Christmas."