It is about time that Hollywood has finally come around to the small town of Bomont for a revival of the original 1984 Kevin Bacon dance classic, Footloose (Paramount Pictures.)

Cast as the rebel dancer from up north, character Ren MacCormack, is newbie Kenny Wormald, who is coming from an acting background of strictly dancing in other films, takes on Bacon’s lead role and provides absolutely nothing. Watching him horrendously butcher a Boston accent isn’t even the beginning of it. As Wormald gallops and speeds across the screen in his rags of a VW Buggy, he is painful to watch as he encounters other characters Ariel, played by Julianne Hough, and the Reverend Moore, played by Dennis Quaid. But, in all fairness, its not only Kenny’s fault that the whole cast comes to shame as they look like walls conversing with each other, spitting out lines that they had seemingly just memorized minutes before shooting, with still faces that look as though they are crying of boredom under the skin.

For those who do not know the plot of Footloose, it honestly isn’t anything to memorable anyway. Nevertheless, here’s a brief rundown. A dance happens where kids drive home intoxicated, get into a car crash and die. As a result, the town council deems public dancing under the age of 18 illegal. Three years later, after his mother passes, new boy MacCormack enters the town of Bomont, Georgia to live with his uncle. He is instantly shocked as to how many laws are in place to limit the kids and keep the town safe.
Ren is soon pulled over by the police for playing music in his car too loudly. The sheriff reassures Ren that “This ain’t Boston” and issues him a fine. Outraged, Ren begins, get this, illegally dancing with groups of kids, and falling for a girl he can’t have, who just happens to be Reverend Moore’s daughter. He leaves town for some legal dancing at a bar, where a Texas square dance turns into what looks close to a porno; and he of course goes for the overall goal of making dancing legal again.

So now you kind of have an idea of what you are getting yourself into while seeing the movie.
Now, for what you are actually going to see when purchasing your movie ticket, the dancing. I was completely shocked, there was next to no dancing at all in the movie. For a movie that’s about an hour-and-thirty-minutes long, there’s maybe ten minutes of dance scenes. The best part is that the dancing isn’t even very impressive. Most of the moves that are choreographed look like ones that you could see from top dancers at your high school prom, which is still cool to watch but you’re paying to see professional choreographed dancing. The dancing in the film is also very sensual and it seems as though the choreographer thought he or she could get away with having two attractive people grinding each other instead of actually dancing. And this is a major down fall of the movie.

This movie has very little going for it. There is one good scene where a friend of Ren, Willard, played by Miles Teller, is taught to dance. It is one shining moment in the movie where the poor writing actually made the audience laugh for an extended period of time.

Otherwise, the movie is full of pointless scenes which add absolutely nothing to the overall plot or themes of the film. The movie could truthfully be about thirty to forty minutes long and reach its ending point with no confusion, and maybe a couple more satisfied viewers.

So, as you can see, Footloose is a crash and burn.