Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
Review by Clint Morris
 Firstly,
let’s get this out of the way. Patrick Swayze appears in Dirty
Dancing 2 for all of five minutes, so if you’re planning on
seeing the film and expecting another Johnny Castle style mega-dance or
Swayze’s brooding presence for much more than a couple of brief scenes,
you’ll be sadly disappointed.
Actually, any fan of the original 1987 film
is going to be disappointed with what the producers have deemed a
follow-up.
The first Dirty Dancing
gained popularity through word of mouth. It didn’t have much of an
advertising campaign, its trailer – I remember it well, it was pretty
weak – wasn’t much and mainly, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey weren’t
anybody before this flick.
What the bolt from the blue had though was
lots of spunk, a pretty decent script, awesome music and best of all,
knock-your-socks-off dance sequences.
Havana Nights has the
dance, it might also have a bit of spunk, what it doesn’t have is much
of a story or much talent to make up for it’s flawed template.
Katey [Romola Garai], your token rich,
polite good-girl, has been dragged to Cuba to live with her family.
There she meets hotel busboy, Javier [Diego Luna] and they immediately
hit it off – so much so that she ropes him into entering a hot little
dance contest since he’s so good on his feet.
And for the remainder of this 80-something
minute flick we watch the couple come together as a dancing queen
whilst head-butting their demons – largely parents, the revolution,
soldiers – off the dance floor.
Swayze and Grey had chemistry. You
immediately believed they had ‘something’. And when they danced, you
just couldn’t help but smile and tap your shoes to the beat. As okay as
they are in their parts, Garai and Luna aren’t believable one bit.
Within about fifteen minutes of the film
they’re supposedly in love – which we don’t see – and for someone that
apparently doesn’t have much of a clue about Cuban dancing, picks it up
incredibly quickly.
Like a packet of soy chips, Havana
Nights might look alright – its locale and talent are
striking enough – but it’s thin and mostly tasteless.
Oh and Patrick Swayze, though the shining
light of the film, has aged pretty darn bad for someone that won’t meet
Jennifer Grey – yep this is supposedly a prequel – until a few years
later.
Who else wishes they just did a sequel to
the first film? Even if they had to glue Jen Grey’s huge schnoz back on?
2 out of 5
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
Australian release: Thursday April 29th
Cast: Diego Luna, Romola Garai, Sela Ward, John Slattery, Jonathan
Jackson, January Jones.
Director: Diego Luna, Guy Ferland.
Website: Click
here.
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