Footloose

Of all the 1984 movies with "song scores," Footloose is second only to Purple Rain as the one with the most instantly identifiable pop tunes. We remember the songs from this movie as much as, or more than, we remember the film itself. The soundtrack is the most important aspect of this non-musical comedy-drama about a teenage kid named Ren (Kevin Bacon) from Chicago who moves with his mother to a rural town where music and dancing are illegal.

The song score era only lasted about fifteen years, pretty much coming to an end by 1988. It was a practice where a single writer, producer, or artist would create all the pop tracks for a movie's soundtrack and subsequent soundtrack album. In this case, that person also penned the screenplay. Footloose began life when songwriter Dean Pitchford was inspired to compose his first-ever narrative when he saw a news story in 1980 about a town in Oklahoma that had voted to lift an 80-year-old ban on dancing. While his resulting script is formulaic, the film transcends most of its clichés by playing the story and its sentiments seriously. Veteran Broadway dancer/choreographer turned movie director Herbert Ross (Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Play It Again, Sam; The Last of Sheila; The Sunshine Boys; Funny Lady; The Seven-Per-Cent Solution; The Turning Point; California Suite; Nijinsky; Pennies From Heaven; The Secret of My Success; Steel Magnolias; Soapdish) leans into all the '80s tropes and pretty much gets away with it. There's no denying that Footloose is one of the most toe-tapping dance pictures of a decade that was awash with such films.

The terrific cast includes John Lithgow as the strict Reverend Shaw, who preaches against the evils of music and dancing but whose daughter, Ariel, falls for the handsome and exciting Chicago boy. The impossibly tall and lean Lori Singer shines as the rebellious girl eager to escape her small town and her father's provincial thinking. Another of the film's many stand-out turns comes from Chris Penn as an oafish farm boy named Willard who is desperate to learn to dance.

Pitchford collaborated on the nine pop tracks with fellow tunesmiths Kenny Loggins, Jim Steinman, Sammy Hagar, Eric Carmen, Michael Gore, and Tom Snow. Each tune underscores a key sequence in the picture, some of which are big dance numbers, and others are set pieces like a game of chicken played with tractors. Of the triple crown of '80s dance pictures—Flashdance, Footloose, and Dirty Dancing—Footloose is the weakest entry because its second half doesn't play as well as the first. As the narrative conflict becomes more acute, there is a notable downshift in energy.

For example, Ren's presentation to the town council about repealing the law against dancing should be a rousing moment, but it's nowhere near as effective as the earlier, unabashedly cheesy (yet never camp) sequence of him blowing off steam by frenetically dancing alone in the giant warehouse where he works. A key moment when Ren and Rev. Shaw come to some kind of meeting of the minds is played mostly off-screen. And a sub-plot about Willard promising his girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) that he won't get into fist-fights awkwardly ends up undercutting the film's central arguments when it should bolster them. Thus, the movie's climactic dance sequence doesn't feel as earned or satisfying as the ones in Flashdance and Dirty Dancing.