Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)
Directed by Guy Ferland
In pre-revolution Cuba, Katey Miller is about to defy everyone's expectations. Instead of a parent-approved suitor, Katey is drawn to the sexy waiter, Javier, who spends his nights dancing in Havana's nightclubs. As she secretly learns to dance with Javier, she learns the meanings of love, sensuality and independence.
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8 films that influenced Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
What critics say influenced Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights
It's apparently a retread of the original Dirty Dancing, but I've never seen that film, actually, so I got pretty caught up in the adolescent passion, which isn't just of the sexual variety but also redolent with the rebellious itch of the almost grownup to really do something with this life thing.
A treacly clone in nearly every miserable, measurable aspect of the surprise hit of 1987, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights' one point of deviation is that where the first film delicately pranced around the issue of race in its gentile/Jew Catskills confusion, its sequel stampedes over its own blue-eyed/brown-eyed intrigue roughshod with a plodder's grace.
With Puerto Rico convincingly standing in for pre-Castro Cuba and charismatic leads who learned to dance up a storm to Afro-Cuban and Latin music, this "Dirty Dancing" stays afloat until it sinks with cliched, perfunctorily relayed ideology and an unbelievably hokey wrapup.
In the 1987 "Dirty Dancing" and 2004's Havana-set remake, the settings of the stories are virtually the same except in their particulars: A Catskills resort, a Havana hotel; pre-JFK assassination America, pre-Batista overthrow Cuba.
Not if you experienced it in 1987 watching the original "Dirty Dancing."
Dirty Dancing: Baby meets and falls for forbidden fruit: resort dance instructor Johnny, played by Patrick Swayze ("Road House").
She is a beauty and a gifted comedian, who played Kate in " Nicholas Nickleby " and was the younger sister, Cassandra, in the wonderful 2003 film " I Capture the Castle ."
Yet Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) and Garai (Nicholas Nickleby) make an appealing couple, while fans of the original Dirty Dancing will be rewarded with an extended cameo by Swayze as a dance instructor.
This time around, class brain and social klutz Katey (Romola Garai, the innocent little sister of "Nicholas Nickleby" with a flavorless mid-Atlantic accent passing for American) is dropped into Batista's Cuba, circa 1958.
Although she's immediately tapped by the boss's son, James Phelps (Jonathan Jackson, "Tuck Everlasting") who wishes to pull her into his cliquish, hermetic country club life, Katey's eye falls on a poolside waiter, Javier Suarez (Diego Luna, "Open Range"), that James's type finds invisible.
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Mika Boorem ("Hearts in Atlantis") is believable as little sister Susie, a link between Katey's liberal sensibilities and the in crowd Susie more naturally gravitates toward.
Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is being touted as a re-imagination of the 1987 mega-hit Dirty Dancing, but this unofficial prequel more accurately evokes a kitschy blend of Lambada and Star Wars.
Trying to shoehorn those personal experiences into the movie's formulaic storyline sometimes seems too much for screenwriters Boaz Yakin (whose directorial credits range from "Remember the Titans" to "Uptown Girls") and newcomer Victoria Arch.
Screenwriter Boaz Yakin ("Uptown Girls") and Victoria Arch take the simple approach, but their dialogue runs out of steam and the actors can only do so much.
Trying to shoehorn those personal experiences into the movie's formulaic storyline sometimes seems too much for screenwriters Boaz Yakin (whose directorial credits range from "Remember the Titans" to "Uptown Girls") and newcomer Victoria Arch.