Leaving aside the question of whether there was a burning need to remake the 27-year-old dance hit Footloose, this slavishly faithful reboot is pretty solid tweener and nostalgist bait. Newcomer Kenny Wormald acquits himself nicely in the old Kevin Bacon role of big city rebel-without-a-clue Ren MacCormack (it helps that Wormald actually looks like a high-school student).
After being forcibly relocated to fictitious Bomont, Tennessee, good bad boy Ren shakes things up by crushing on the local pastor’s hot-to-boogie daughter Ariel (Julianne Hough) and crusading to overturn a WTF? law that bans loud music and teen dancing.
Director Craig Brewer’s (Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan) predilection for the flavorsome and mostly integrated culture of the New South insures that the movie never gets too synthetic or sanitized, while still being a tad less edgy than the original. Still, this Footloose has a pretty good beat, and you might even tap your toes to it. --Milan Paurich
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