The Greatest Dance Movie Ever Made

Let’s talk rainy day movies.

I assume that every family with several small children has a cache of movies that tend to come out on rainy days when all those kids are cooped up inside. In my case, I am the eldest of four children who were born within five years of each other. Given that we didn’t get along terribly well when we were kids, rainy day movies needed to be unanimously approved in order to avoid complete chaos.

There were a couple of approved choices in my family, but by far, the favored contender was “Dirty Dancing.”

Let’s take a look at some of the themes and players that show up in Dirty Dancing, shall we?

• Baby Houseman: recent High School graduate who plans to attend a liberal arts college for women, where she will study economics and then join the Peace Corps.
• Blurring of class boundaries: Baby’s dad is a doctor. Patrick Swayze’s Johnny is a working-class dance instructor. They fight crime. They fall in love.
• Botched back-alley abortions: Penny, Johnny’s dance partner has become pregnant with Robbie’s fetus! Baby lies to her father and gets the cash so that Penny can have an illegal abortion! It goes badly, and Baby’s physician father gets called in to fix it! (This is one of the many times at which it pays to not overthink things in the Dirty Dancing world. I’m not sure how Dr. Houseman “fixed” things without taking Penny to a hospital.)
• Lisa: Baby’s sexually liberated older sister, who makes poor decisions about who to sleep with when she decides that Robbie is “the one.” She also has a great line about Baby not caring “who I hump, as long as they’re on the right side of the Ho Chi Minh trail!”
• Sexy midnight dance parties that no one in a position of authority EVER finds out about, even though Baby managed to find them about 15 minutes into the movie. Enough said.

As you can see, “Dirty Dancing” has all the elements that you would want your young children reveling in every time they’re trapped inside by a rainy day! I’m not sure why my mother ever let us watch it, given her rather conservative political leanings, but I’m glad she did! Because although I see all of the stuff above as an adult, as a kid, “Dirty Dancing” was all about the music and dancing.

Have you ever listened to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack? It’s amazing! “She’s Like the Wind,” “Hungry Eyes,” “You Don’t Own Me,” and of course, “I’ve Had the Time of My Life.” The soundtrack of Dirty Dancing is the most 80’s version of the 60’s that has ever been created! It’s magical. Patrick Swayze sings on it.

And of course, we can’t leave out the dancing. The dancing is the hottest best part of the movie:

And of course, the grand finale, which is hands down The Best ending of any dance movie ever.

She nails the lift, you guys! I love this movie! I hear that it's raining right now in Southern California, so if you're back home, I suggest you curl up with a rainy day movie, and you'd be hard-pressed to do better than "Dirty Dancing."