Another that kind of surprised me was
Dirty Dancing (1987), that despite some trite dialogue is surprrisingly uplifting and fun. Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze have great onscreen chemistry.
The film drew adult audiences instead of the expected teens, with viewers rating the film highly.[23] Many filmgoers, after seeing the film once, went back into the theater to watch it a second time.[23] Word-of-mouth promotion took the film to the number one position in the United States, and in 10 days it had broken the $10 million mark. By November, it was also achieving international fame. Within seven months of release, it had brought in $63 million in the US and boosted attendance in dance classes across America.[46] It was one of the highest-grossing films of 1987, earning $170 million worldwide.[47][48]
The film's popularity continued to grow after its initial release. It was the number one video rental of 1988[49] and became the first film to sell a million copies on video. When the film was re-released in 1997, ten years after its original release, Swayze received his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,[12] and videos were still selling at the rate of over 40,000 per month.[12] As of 2005, it was selling a million DVDs per year,[50] with over ten million copies sold as of 2007.[51]
A May 2007 survey by Britain's Sky Movies listed Dirty Dancing as number one on "Women's most-watched films", above the Star Wars trilogy, Grease, The Sound of Music, and Pretty Woman.[52] The film's popularity has also caused it to be called "the Star Wars for girls."[6][53][54] An April 2008 article in Britain's Daily Mail listed Dirty Dancing as number one on a list of "most romantic movie quotes ever", for Baby's line: "I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you."[55]
The film's music has also had considerable impact. The closing song, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", has been listed as the "third most popular song played at funerals" in the UK.[6]
I love that line about "Star Wars for girls".
That explains how Sands resort selected the "I've Had the Time of My Life" song for prominent use in their commercials for at least 12 years now. The movie soundtrack is still so popular I still hear the songs on the radio while driving pretty much every day, 33 years later.
An interesting detail, while this movie skyrocketed Jennifer Grey to superstardom, it was pretty much the end of her career. She was growing in popularity in movies like
Red Dawn and
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (my favorite with her). But right after she completed
Dirty Dancing she had plastic surgery to straighten her nose, and it completely changed her appearance. So ironically, while
Dirty Dancing made her a highly marketable face, she changed that face, and unrecognizable, had trouble finding work after that.
I actually like as much if not more the sequel/prequel
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Where the first movie was set in a Catskill mountains resort in 1963, the latter prequel is set in Cuba in 1959, on the eve of Castro's revolution there. Where the dancing is a repressed expression of freedom.
Despite that the movie was widely panned, I think it has a better-looking cast, better cinematography and location scenery, and far more palatable dialogue, that cleverly plays on the undercurrent of revolution building. Patrick Swayze has a brief re-appearance as the dance instructor at a resort hotel in Havana.
