‘Dirty Dancing’ has all the right moves: 1987 review

I loved this movie. It seems to dream itself, as it tells the story of a young girl who comes alive in the summer of 1963.

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It was a time, recalled Frances Houseman (Jennifer Grey), “when everybody called me Baby, and it didn’t occur to me to mind.” Baby, her parents (Jerry Ohrbach, Kelly Bishop) and her princess sister Lisa (Jane Bruckner) have come on vacation to Kellerman’s Mountain House in the Catskills. Lisa’s tragedy is that she hasn’t brought the right shoes. “That’s not a tragedy.” Baby says. “A tragedy is a monk burning himself up.” “Butt out Baby,” says Lisa.

Lisa is into clothes, while Baby yearns to join the Peace Corps. “Baby’s going to change the world,” says their father. And Lisa? “Oh, Lisa’s going to decorate it.”

At Kellerman’s, there’s a staff to teach the merengue, the male guests play cards, and sometimes their bored wives mess around with the staff, who are here, says owner Max Kellerman (Jack Weston) “to keep the guests happy.”

 

The nerdy Kellerman grandson (London Price) has eyes for Baby, and brags to her that he’s “the catch of the county.” Baby isn’t interested. And then one night, she stumbles into the staff quarters, where a frenzied dance party is going on, and she dances with Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), and begins to fall in love.

Johnny, the resort’s dance instructor, is a boy from a rough neighborhood in Philadelphia. Despite his talent and good looks, he thinks of himself as nobody, nothing. In one of the most touching scenes in the movie, Baby reviles him for having slept - before he met her - with some of the female guests, and he tries to explain himself. “You come from the streets,” he says, “and you come up here, and there are so many women, and they smell so good and you think they must care about me or they wouldn’t be doing it.”

When Johnny’s dance instructor, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), gets sick, Baby is pressed into service as Johnny’s partner - she learns really fast , through the magic of the movies - and they give a show at a nearby hotel and Baby does great.

There is a lot of dancing in “Dirty Dancing,” but you will like it even if you hate dancing, because you like Baby so much you’re interested in her progress. There is also a nostalgia for growing up in a more innocent age, a kind of end of summer sadness. Everyone in the picture is terrific. Especially Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, who are sweet and sexy, and beautiful together, and Jane Bruckner, who is a wonderful comic. The music (mostly from the ’60s), choreography and script are also swell. A little movie with a big wallop.