It’s been three decades since Patrick Swayze’s swaying hips first seduced a generation of cinemagoers. A lot has changed – no one wears shoulder pads any more, for starters - but you’re still guaranteed to have the time of your life, if only because it’s such a nostalgia-fest for the first time you got swept up in Baby and Johnny's fling.
The ‘Dirty Dancing’ uninitiated – if they exist – are in for a treat, too. Cossetted teenager Baby (Jennifer Grey) spends her last holiday before college with her parents at a wholesome resort in the Catskills, but wandering into staff quarters she uncovers a world of music, movement and sex. She’s privileged, idealistic and naïve. The dancers are world-weary, cynical and living pay-packet to pay-packet. Soon she’s falling hard for Swayze’s hot-stuff dance instructor Johnny.
Gyrating hips and intense eye contact do fill up much of the running time, but there’s more to this movie than love on the dancefloor. The summer changes Baby, and tests her theories about the world. It’s about standing up for what’s right and growing up in the process. She’ll still go to college; Johnny will still struggle to make ends meet. But that doesn’t matter. Like their summer romance, ‘Dirty Dancing’ is a moment in time, and it’s a thoroughly enjoyable one to lose yourself in.