First released in 1984, Footloose now enjoys the same sort of semi-ironic nostalgic cachet as John Hughes' contemporary schlock-fests about angst-ridden teens with silly hair. This is partly due to the fact that, as breathtakingly predictable kids-against-the-squares romps go, it's really pretty tolerable, but it's mostly because of the soundtrack. The songs that appear in the film--notably Kenny Loggins' infectiously vapid title track, and gale-force screecher Bonnie Tyler's excruciating "Holding Out for a Hero"--are possessed of an awfulness so monolithic that they have transcended their era and become reliable floor-fillers at 80s nostalgia discos all over the western world. The plot, such as it is, sees the eerily androidal Kevin Bacon playing a hip rock & roll youth from the big city rebelling against the strictures of the conservative small town in which he finds himself living. Inevitably, he falls for the daughter of his nemesis, the local preacher (the latter, it has to be said, is played with some aplomb by John Lithgow, who very nearly wrings depth from a character otherwise straight out of the colour-by-numbers guide to movie-making). Inevitably, there are some dance sequences. Inevitably, the kids win out, and the grown-ups realise that maybe they aren't so bad after all. On the DVD: Footloose can be watched on disc, should you so desire, dubbed in German, Spanish, French or Italian. There also subtitles available in pretty well every European language, as well as Arabic, Hebrew, Russian and Turkish. Other than that there are no extras. --Andrew Mueller
The music is on his side. Teenager Ren MacCormack sends ripples through Bomont a small Midwestern town that could stand some shaking up when he arrives from Chicago with his mother Ethel to settle with her relatives. The adults tend to view him with suspicion as a possible contaminant from the outer world. Some of his male peers eye him as a threat and most of the girls just plain eye him. It's a tough time for Ren whose father deserted him and his mother leaving them
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