What makes this film notable, however, is not the dancing or any of the usual movie "frills." I was struck, while watching this film, with how easily I could talk over the issues this film brings up with my daughter!
No, it is not a great film. It is only average, at best. But the writers' willingness to discuss abortion, and have the viewing public come back for more (in fact, this film has become a cult favorite over the years), must be commended.
Jennifer Grey plays Baby Houseman, who is a spoiled little rich girl whose Daddy (played by Jerry Orbach, that guy from Law and Order) earns a three-week stay in Kellerman's (a mythical Borscht Belt Catskills resort) by virtue of the fact that he is successfully keeping the owner's blood pressure down to manageable levels. (Some feat in the 1960s when they didn't have the dietary and pharmaceutical treatments they do now.) In addition to a doting dad, she has a whiny, pain-in-the neck sister with no singing voice to speak of who is named Lisa, and a stay-at-home mom who doesn't really have that much to do in this film.
Baby meets up with the entertainment staff of the film - the resort's PC term for the dance instructors. Of course, she falls immediately for the wrong-side-of-the-tracks dreck de la dreck of the film, named Johnny, during the opening scenes. It is established there that Johnny is considered to be a slut - the term is not used openly in the movie, but this movie is rare in putting Johnny down as someone who is too promiscuous, during a time in our history when men could be as promiscuous as they wished without fear of rebuke while women were denigrated if they lost their virginity. (It is also established that the resort's favorite employee, whom Lisa develops a crush on and who is a member of the waitstaff of the resort restaurant, is equally promiscuous, and was the direct
reason why the abortion was needed to begin with. This resort waiter does not suffer consequences for his behavior until the very end of the film, however.)
The resort employee needing the abortion is played by Cynthia Rhodes, and the character, Penny, is a very close childhood friend of Johnny's. They are so close, in fact, that Dr. Houseman gets the wrong impression about Penny and Johnny; he thinks that Johnny impregnated Penny in the first place, something he basically comes out and says after he has to treat Penny for an abortion-induced infection. (This is why Roe v. Wade was so much an issue with those who are pro-choice, by the way - Penny's complications were far more commonly produced by back-alley abortionists who were ill-trained, and she had no access to cooperatives such as JANE which existed in Chicago until Roe v. Wade came down in 1973.)
The rest of the movie takes off from there. Johnny and Baby fall in love despite Dr. Houseman's disapproval, after he treated Penny for her infection. Baby fills in for Penny at a dance exhibition while she takes the time necessary to have the abortion in the first place. Johnny gets fired on the flimsy pretext of employee theft, when it turns out that two of the resort guests (who were elderly and acted doddering as a "red herring" of sorts in order to prevent the discovery of their pickpocketing) were doing the thieving he was accused of doing in the first place. Everything comes out all right at the end of the film, when Dr. Houseman hands the favored child/waiter a check for his college education and gets a whole pile of baloney in return about how he had been "unfairly accused" of impregnating Penny, and Dr. Houseman recognizes the dodges the fellow is using as being ways of denying responsibility for impregnating an innocent girl out of wedlock. And one of the women with whom Johnny had been having an affair before Baby came along - one is led to believe that this woman got together with the "favored child" waiter to get Johnny fired in the first place for no longer wanting to be promiscuous with her - just up and leaves the resort at the end with no explanation given as to why.
The best thing about this film, other than its unflinching honesty about abortion, is Patrick Swayze's dancing. It is also hard to imagine him as coming from any other side of the tracks than the wrong one.
But it is still not a movie I'd recommend for people to watch unless you are willing to do a lot of explaining and are also willing to put up with an horrendously cheesy, stereotyped plot.
It's summer 1963. Baby 17 years old and all idealistic innocence is vacationing with her parents in the Catskills. She meets Johnny the hotel dance in...More at Family Video
Heartthrob Patrick Swayze (Red Dawn), Jennifer Grey (Ferris Bueller s Day Off) and dancing sensation Cynthia Rhodes (Flashdance) star in this electrif...More at Buy.com
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