Review: New Footloose Soundtrack 2011 With Blake Shelton

Where was Glee's Ryan Murphy or Step Up director Jon Chu when it came to choosing a director that would do justice to the New Footloose Soundtrack 2011 & Movie? Really, how hard could it be? The musical template was already set up by the successful Highschool Musical movies.

It even would have been fun to see what the movie would have been like in the hands of a music video director like say, Spike Jonze who has experience directing bands like Fatboy Slim & the Beastie Boys plus film experience on Being John Malkovich & Where the Wild Things Are.

The 2011 movie version of Footloose falls flat on its face with little known Hustle & Flow director Craig Brewer who fought for creative control of the movie then chose to focus instead on making the movie more than a fluff piece, wanting to dramatically explore the movie's theme of unjustified reactionary authoritarianism. On the 10th anniversary of 9-11, this theme certainly has relevance but not in a dance flick.

Call me shallow, but I just wanted to see more dance numbers, more poppin' and lockin', less fighting, less preaching and yeah, maybe a dance off or two. What would have made the movie stronger is a celebration of life in reaction to such tragedy with a subtle weaving of that theme rather than to take us hostage by this premise.

As soon as the lights went up, I remember thinking, well that wasn't that bad. The dialogue was fun and snappy. The dancing was enjoyable. I was expecting far worse for a remake. But when you think about it, that's not exactly the most rave review either. I asked my friend what he thought and since he had never seen the original, his one sentence flat review summed up the movie's biggest problem, "I thought there should have been more dancing".

Footloose Soundtrack: Deluxe Version
Source: Amazon.com