I considered trying to write this in typical review fashion (i.e. paragraphs) but that sort of fanciness and skill is beyond me. Instead I’ve decided to give some awards that will hopefully shed some light on my thoughts about what some may call the best, dirtiest, danciest movie of all time: Dirty Dancing.

Baby was easily the best all around person in this story and it’s not even close. She comes from money but isn’t pretentious. She’s straight edge but open to new experiences. She wants the best for everybody and is willing to help strangers while standing up for them and herself and what’s right. I think the key takeaway and lesson we can learn from Baby’s experience is that if you’re a genuinely good person, eventually you will get to have sex with Patrick Swayze. Multiple times. And the icing on the cake is that your dad will be supportive of your sexual relationship with Patrick Swayze. That’s a lesson worth learning.

Can’t remember what Penny’s last name is but I do remember she was preggers. 

Robbie Gould is the worst piece of trash in the movie. He knocks up Penny and then refuses to help her get an abortion. He seemingly has zero remorse about this and therefore he’s probably a sociopath. He’s also a bad waiter! All he does is talk about going to stupid Yale Med School when he should instead be refilling everybody’s vodka waters.  

I don’t think we ever see this character but he sure did a number on poor Penny. She left for her appointment in good spirits but came back bloody and unwell. I may have missed this, but did they ever say if Penny’s pregnancy was successfully aborted? I’m assuming yes based on the blood, but you never do know for sure. After all, we did learn from Rick and Morty that sometimes “science is more art than science”. If the abortion was successful, maybe this doctor wasn’t so bad after all. But either way it seems as if he definitely could improve his bedside manner.  

Apparently if you miss one Saturday evening of work Kellerman’s Resort will withhold an entire summer’s worth of salary. This seems extremely harsh and also very illegal, yet nobody seems to question it nor care. The Kellermans are bad people and bad employers, and yet the Housemans and many other families continue to patronize their resort. This is all very bad. People should stop going here.

Baby is a dance prodigy. She goes from being intrigued by dancing to becoming a professional level dancer in maybe two montages? Like 15 minutes of real time? It doesn’t matter because she’s absolutely incredible. So incredible in fact that I think she should focus her skill and talent on something more useful, like medical school. She can take Robbie Gould’s spot at Yale. Based on Baby’s ability to learn dance quickly, I have to imagine that if you showed her a Covid patient today, she’d come up with a cure for the virus by the end of next week.

Jake is Baby’s dad. He has very classic Dad ups and downs throughout the movie. He unknowingly gives Baby money for secret illegal abortions (good Dad!). He gets mad at Baby for hanging out with what he thinks are garbage people (bad Dad!). He still takes care of the garbage people when the garbage people need help even though he thinks they’re garbage people (good and bad Dad!). He also eventually comes around and punishes those who deserve to be punished (Robbie Gould) and eventually accepts Patrick Swayze’s penis into his own family. Overall good Dad!

Baby, entirely flustered by the visual brilliance that is Patrick Swayze dancing in a non-professional setting, was asked why she was at a dance party. She can only respond with “I carried a watermelon”. This leads to the biggest plot hole of the movie: Swayze seems to give absolutely zero fucks about the missing watermelon. If I were Swayze, I would’ve followed up and asked her where the watermelon is. He was very sweaty and tired (due to all of the sexy dancing in the nighttime) and you can only assume that some nice cold watermelon really would’ve hit the spot in that moment. But it doesn’t matter because this quote is just good. The next time I’m flustered in a meeting at work, or maybe the next time my therapist asks me something that I don’t want to answer, I will take a page out of old Baby’s book and reply with “I CARRIED A WATERMELON.” Then I’ll sit back and relax as everybody else just walks away and leaves me alone.

I’m very bad at picking out watermelons so I’m giving this award to the watermelon that I think looks the worst, because the fact that I think it’s the worst probably means it’s actually the best. Therefore the award goes to the big melly in the middle. Good stripes.

I’m a sucker for any story that’s set in a world where the only four possible occupations are Waiter, Regular Doctor, Unlicensed Abortionist Doctor, and Professional Dancer. In this type of reality, it makes sense why every single person would spend almost every single moment of their free time dancing. It’s because nobody wants to be a waiter, it’s too hard to be a regular doctor, and most people don’t want to abort babies without a medical license. The only job left is Professional Dancer! Everybody needs to practice all the time! It’s either that or you’re unemployed.

Anyhow: Baby is no longer afraid of public lifts. Patrick Swayze is chill. Abortions are fun. I love a science fiction-y, dystopian setting where the only thing that matters in the world is DANCE. All we do is dance all day in order to prepare for a long night of dancing. We then go dance in our dances until the dance comes up and then we start to dance all over dance dance DANCE. 

I give this movie 8.5 babies out of 10 corners. Would watch again.