Retread: 'Footloose' remake out of step

There's one thing to be said for a remake of a 1984 movie that uses the original screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar – sometimes song for song and line for line – that I was wickedly tempted to reprint my 1984 review, word for word. But That Would Be Wrong. I think I could have gotten away with it, though. The movies differ in such tiny details (the hero now moves to Tennessee from Boston, not Chicago) that few would have noticed.

Was there then, or is there now, a town in Tennessee or any other state in which the city council has passed a law against "dancing in public"? There may have been a brief period, soon after Elvis first began grinding his pelvis and preachers denounced rock 'n' roll as "the devil's music." But for most young moviegoers this plot point is going to seem so unlikely as to be bizarre.

We again get a plot in which a high school beer party leads to a fatal crash, taking the lives of five teenagers. The city council bans the music, under the influence of Rev. Shaw Moore (Dennis Quaid). Rev. Moore, who seems to be the only preacher in town, acts as the de facto civic moral leader. Full review.