Movie Quote of the Day: Dirty Dancing

So you say, why buy a movie that you have seen a million times years ago and still remember the movie virtually verbatim. I'll tell you why, because it's five bucks at Walmart. I haven't seen Dirty Dancing in years. A lot of the DVD's I've gotten lately have been flashbacks to the 80's. Some films held up better than others. I imagine most people have seen it even if it was against their will, so I won't bore you with re-hashing the plot details.

Since I haven't seen it since before I began studying film, I notice things I didn't pay much attention to before. Like the beautiful lighting in the scene when Baby (Jennifer Grey) is changing in the back of Johnny's (Patrick Swayze) car while he is peeking in the mirror. Or the mise en scene and performance when Baby and Johnny are playing around and dancing to Mickey and Sylvia's Love is Strange. A very classic and memorable scene that apparently wasn't even meant to be in the film. Patrick and Jennifer were warming up and rehearsing but the director (Emile Ardolino) liked it so much, he kept it in the film. I appreciate the subtleties now like the way the director had some of the scenes with Baby and her father (Jerry Orbach, RIP) silhouetted, which I now read as a visual representation of their inability to communicate. Just like in Brokeback Mountain, the two main characters in the love story, Baby and Johnny, are always wearing the same colours, a visual representation of their personalities. Baby is almost always in white. White capris, white blouse, white tennis shoes, or white flowy dress. Johnny is always in black. Black tank top, black pants, black leather jacket, black sunglasses. It did always bother me a little bit that it is another film that feeds little girls fantasies. Baby is the idealistic, romantic, naive good girl who sees the good in bad boy Johnny Castle, who's really a hurt little boy inside and just needs the right woman to make him feel loved and believe in him. Excuse me for a minute....*barf*. Okay. Other than that, story wise, it is a technically well made movie. Everybody always quotes Johnny's "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" as the most memorable quote in the movie. Not me, I have a different one. Here it is....

Baby (incredulously): "I carried a watermelon??"

More ramblings to come.....