Introduction

Release date: August 21, 1987 (USA)

Director: Emile Ardolino

Featured song: (I've Had) The Time of My Life

Screenplay: Eleanor Bergstein

Rating: PG-13 (adult situations/language)

Genre: Drama, Musical & Performing Arts, Romance



Baby (Jennifer Grey) is one listless summer away
from the Peace Corps. Hoping to enjoy her youth while
it lasts, she's disappointed when her summer plans
deposit her at a sleepy resort in the Catskills with her
parents. Her luck turns around, however, when the
resort's dance instructor, Johnny (Patrick Swayze),
enlists Baby as his new partner, and the two fall in love.
Baby's father forbids her from seeing Johnny, but she's
determined to help him perform the last big dance of
the summer.

Cast List

Jennifer Grey

as Baby Houseman

Patrick Swayze

as Johnny Castle

Jerry Orbach

as Jake Houseman

Cynthia Rose

as Penny Johnson

Jack Weston

as Max Kellerman

Jane Brucker

as Lisa Houseman

Lonny Price

as Neil Kellerman

Criticism

The film received positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 72% based on reviews from 57 critics, with a rating average of 6.1 out of 10. For the film's opening, the August 16, 1987 edition of The New York Times published a major review, with a headline reading, "Dirty Dancing Rocks to an Innocent Beat." The Times reviewer called the film "a metaphor for America in the summer of 1963 – orderly, prosperous, bursting with good intentions, a sort of Yiddish-inflected Camelot." Other reviews were more mixed: Gene Siskel gave the film a "marginal Thumbs Up" as he liked Jennifer Grey's acting and development of her character, while Roger Ebert gave it "Thumbs Down" due to its "idiot plot", calling it a "tired and relentlessly predictable story of love between kids from different backgrounds." TIME magazine was lukewarm, saying, "If the ending of Eleanor Bergstein's script is too neat and inspirational, the rough energy of the film's song and dance does carry one along, past the whispered doubts of better judgment." In a retrospective review, Jezebel's Irin Carmon called the film "the greatest movie of all time" as "a great, brave movie for women" with "some subtle, retrospectively sharp-eyed critiques of class and gender."

The film drew adult audiences instead of the expected teens, with viewers rating the film highly. Many filmgoers, after seeing the film once, went right back into the theater to watch it a second time. Word-of-mouth promotion took the film to the number one position in the United States, and in 10 days it had broken the $10 million mark. By November, it was also achieving international fame. Within seven months of release, it had brought in $63 million domestically and boosted attendance in dance classes across America. It was one of the highest-grossing films of 1987, earning $170 million worldwide.

The film's popularity continued to grow after its initial release. It was the number one video rental of 1988 and became the first film to sell a million copies on video. When the film was re-released in 1997, ten years after its original release, Swayze received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and videos were still selling at the rate of over 40,000 per month. As of 2005, it was selling a million DVDs per year, with over ten million copies sold as of 2007.

A May 2007 survey by Britain's Sky Movies listed Dirty Dancing as number one on "Women's most-watched films", above the Star Wars trilogy, Grease, The Sound of Music, and Pretty Woman.The film's popularity has also caused it to be called "the Star Wars for girls."An April 2008 article in Britain's Daily Mail listed Dirty Dancing as number one on a list of "most romantic movie quotes ever", for Baby's line: "I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."

Influence

Abortion rights advocates have called the film the “gold standard” for cinematic portrayals of abortion, which author Yannis Tzioumakis described as offering a "compassionate depiction of abortion in which the woman seeking an abortion was not demonized with the primary concerns being her health and preserving her capacity to bear children at a future time rather than the ethical dilemma that might or might not inform her decision, a portrayal that is not necessarily available in current films.

Additional Information

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092890/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Dancing

http://dirtydancing.wikia.com/wiki/ Dirty_ancing_Wiki

http://www.eonline.com/news/874313/dirty-dancing-turns-30-writer-talks-johnny-baby-s-future-a-possible-sequel-why-patrick-swayze-was-her-first-only-choice