Since I had never seen Footloose when I was younger I went back and re-watched the “dance” oriented film I can remember watching at countless sleep-overs, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. The film stars Sarah Jessica Parker (who was in Footloose the year before) Helen Hunt, and Shannon Doherty.
Janey (SJP) and her strict Military family have just moved into town, and one of the first friend she meets is Lynne (Hunt.) Lynne is a bit of a rebel, she has equipped her Catholic School uniform with Velcro to reverse the skirt and remove the sleeves. The girls bond over their favorite TV show Dance TV, an MTV type show.
DanceTV is holding an open audition and the girls decide to go. Quickly we see that Lynne is not going to make the cut but Janey emerges in the finals. She is paired with a burly, dumb jock type Jeff. Once her family finds out that she has skipped class, they are furious and she is grounded. She manages to sneak around for what seems like weeks while she and Jeff struggle through practices, and deal with the jealousy of the rich girl Natalie who thinks she can buy the contest.
The finals are held live on DanceTV and I don’t want to spoil the ending, but you can guess who wins. This film was very similar to Footloose in a lot of ways, for example a killer sound track. However the reason dancing was allowed was not due to religion, but military beliefs that it was inappropriate for a girl to be acting that way, and go into the city on her own. I was also surprised that this film was made before Dirty Dancing, as the Father – Daughter relationship was incredibly similar. If you weren’t wowed by the romance in Footloose, this offers up a lot more between Janey and Jeff.
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