Dancing up a storm... Georgina Rich and Josef Brown in Dirty Dancing. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The trouble with Dirty Dancing, reviewers concluded, was that the stage musical that opened this week in London's West End was a very faithful, competently-executed rendition of the film.
Or, as the Guardian's Lyn Gardner put it, "a straightforward frame-by-frame recreation of the movie experience". And like Gardner, the Times' Benedict Nightingale could only ask why, as in, "Why not get a DVD of the movie, where such things occur more seamlessly?"
The Telegraph knew very well why: 260,000 tickets sold before opening night, chiefly to the film's "army of ardent supporters". So reviewer Dominic Cavendish reasoned, "You can accuse director James Powell of a lack of imagination or just providing great customer service."
With that in mind, Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail declared it "a night of good, jiggly rubbish". Independent reviewer Paul Taylor even found it "very enjoyable" though he devoted half his attention to plotting a spin-off, Filthy Flower-Arranging.
The stage version's sole effort at originality, referencing the civil rights movement with a rendition of We Shall Overcome, was slammed by the Independent as "awkward, perfunctory and tacked-on".
But never mind originality, how was the dancing? Only Gardner was underwhelmed on this score: "Not so much dirty dancing as mildly dishevelled dancing... like an advert for soap powder being shot on the cheap". The others found it "ravishing", "brilliant", performed with "a raunchy, amused sensuousness". Georgina Rich as Baby and Josef Brown as Johnny earned general kudos and certainly convinced Nightingale that "dancing isn't almost as good as sex. No, sex is almost as good as dancing".
However, Letts's complaint, "It's a product, and it shows", was roundly echoed. Still, no one disagreed that for better or worse, it offered the time of your life - again.
But were you there? Have the critics got it right?
