 |
Sequel
a let down, as usual
New
Dirty Dancing doesn’t live up to the original
By Christina
Ruffini
I have
never laughed so hard during a movie in my life. I was
crying with laughter. My friends were cracking up, the
girls behind me were rolling and so was the rest of the
very small audience. The odd part of it was, “Dirty
Dancing Havana Nights” is not a comedy.
The movie starts out with potential. The slightly homely
main character, Katy Miller (Romola Garai), arrives in
Havana, Cuba after her father’s company transfers
them there. She is bewildered and unsure of her surroundings.
Like the main character in the original, she is brainy
rather than popular. Her family lives in a huge building
with many other wealthy Americans. (I was never quite
sure if they were in a hotel or an apartment building,
but that was the least of this movie’s problems.)
While lounging poolside one day, the girl sees one of
the other American kids run into a young waiter, Javier
Suarez (Diego Luna), causing him to spill all of his drinks.
This is her first contact with a young man who will soon
change her life in ways she never imagined. They meet
on and off a few times, he starts to teach her to dance
and thus begins the romance of the film, along with the
absurd cheesiness.’
As the romance unfolds, the film gets worse and worse.
The laughing in our audience began while the two are dancing
in the ocean and she is wearing the most uncomplimentary
bathing suit ever created. At one point she jumps into
his arms, they spin in a circle, the footage goes to a
slow-mo shot and the screen fades slowly to the next seen.
From there, the movie just fell apart.
The remainder of the film is shallow character development,
nauseatingly sweet dialogue and a brief Cuban revolution
that takes one scene and about two and a half minutes
to occur. The two lead actors are merely adequate and
neither is particularly attractive. The casting was especially
strange since neither of the two are dancers. The costumes,
although cute, are not historically accurate and the hair
and makeup for the female lead was atrocious. I have never
seen so much frizz on the silver screen. I also thought
it ironic that Revlon advertisements have been pushing
the fact that their makeup was used in the film. Trust
me, they should be hiding that fact, not promoting it.
Overall, the film was mildly entertaining, although that
might have just been because my friends and I spent the
majority of the time making fun of it. The high point
of the film was Patrick Swayze’s cameo — because
as old as he is, he is still better looking than anyone
else in the film. “Dirty Dancing Havana Nights”
is no where near as good as the original. This baby should
have stayed in the corner. |
|
|
|
|
Special
to the Skiff
|
| Javier
Suarez (Diego Luna) and Katy Miller (Romola Garai)
secretly meet in a Havana nightclub to learn dance
steps in preparation for a prestigious national
competition. |
|
|
