Dirty Dancing (1987)

Film and Plot Synopsis

A teenage girl learns about love, adult responsibility, and how to do the Dirty Boogie in this romantic drama that is loved around the world.

‘Dirty Dancing’ Movie Summary

Dirty Dancing is set in the early-60s before the Kennedy assassination and The Beatles, when innocence was on life support. Daddy’s pet, the idealistic college- and Peace Corp-bound Baby, with Baby’s narcissistic and tone-deaf sister, Lisa, and their two parents, Dr. & Mrs. Houseman, are on a weeks-long vacation in the Catskill Mountains at Kellerman’s – a posh resort for the bored elite where they play Bingo, try on platinum wigs, and take ballroom lessons from retired Rockettes.

Baby is immediately smitten by the smokin’ hot Johnny, the smokin’ hot dance instructor at the resort. Baby’s awkward attempt to dance dirty with smokin’ hot Johnny only lasts one song before she is summarily left on the dance floor while smokin’ hot Johnny and the rest the working-class grunts run off without her. As Baby is being romanced by the prissy nephew of Kellerman, she tries to get close to smokin’ hot Johnny and his childhood friend and floozy extraordinaire, Penny.

One night, Baby finds Penny alone and scared and finds smokin’ hot Johnny, who realizes Penny’s pregnant from one of the rich college kids working at the resort, but everyone thinks the baby is smokin’ hot Johnny’s – because, of course, they DANCE together so that immediately means that’s how she got pregnant? Was this screenplay written by the “Footloose” guy? Anyway, Penny needs $250 for an abortion but none of the working kids has the money – because, well, they’re poor and Baby wouldn’t have any other way to lie to her father besides sleeping with the smokin’ hot forbidden, dance instructor but it’s too soon in the film. So, Baby lies to her doctor father and gets the money that dad just happens to have in his wallet on an all-expenses paid holiday vacation up in the remote Catskill Mountains.

The problem is that the night Penny needs the abortion is the same night smokin’ hot Johnny & Penny are supposed to do the tango at another resort to earn money for the dancers. Coincidence? I think NOT! Baby volunteers to crash-course the tango from smokin’ hot Johnny – because, well, he’s the smokin’ hot Patrick Swayze in tight chinos and high heels. I’m getting sweaty just thinking about it. So we insert the obligatory music montage of taking awkward Baby and the combative, smokin’ hot Johnny and teaching her how to dance like a ballerina within in one week because, yeah, that happens. Of course they fall in love – but not really.

Once they do the dance, including Baby doing a strange duck walk onstage to a standing ovation, they arrive back to Kellermans only to find that Penny’s abortion went catastrophically wrong. She’s in great pain so Baby fetches her father and his doctor’s bag in the middle of the night. Dr. Houseman saves Penny. He also blames the smokin’ hot Johnny because that’s what all good doctors do, they blame the assumed daddy for the botched abortion. Of course nobody had ever gotten pregnant at a summer resort before this film. Then the good doc blasts Baby for lying to Daddy and she  instantly goes into the doctor’s dog-Houseman.

Lisa becomes Daddy’s favorite and decides she wants to sleep with the same rich slimy kid that got Penny pregnant – because the other hundred or so male employees at the resort must be unavailable for a cute brunette. “Hello, NEWMAN!!” At the same time, Baby sleeps with smokin’ hot Johnny and makes things even more awkward between them. As we head toward our inevitable musical dance-number conclusion, we realize that:

1. Baby throws her father under the bus for holding her to the unrealistic parental standard of basic honesty;
2. Baby sleeps with smokin’ hot Johnny for all the world to see so he loses his job and his only income to pay for the window to his smokin’ hot ’57 Chevy;
3. Baby ducks behind a tree with smokin’ hot Johnny when her dad walks by so smokin’ hot Johnny feels like a loser all over again;
4. Baby throws the sweet old couple robbing people blind at different resorts to the police to save smokin’ hot Johnny’s job which doesn’t help anyway;
5. Baby delivers one of the worst line deliveries of all-time when smokin’ hot Johnny tells her he’s fired so SHE’S the victim in all this;
6. Baby interferes in her sister’s love life by telling her not to sleep with someone when Baby’s smoked more hotness under the sheets than Penny the dance ho; and
7. Baby sits in a corner pouting until smokin’ hot Johnny takes her out of “Baby’s Corner” and crashes the summer finale to Dirty Dance their pachengas off to music that won’t be invented for another forty years.

But that’s what’s needed in order to lift Baby up in the air triumphantly on smokin’ hot Patrick Swayze’s broken knee because THAT’S how you Dirty Dance!

The End.