Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)

Producer: Lawrence Bender, Director: Guy Ferland
Miramax

Reviewed by Popcorn and the Kernels - 3/6/05

In 1958, American teen Katey Miller (Romola Garai) moves to Havana, Cuba, with her parents.  Her dad (John Slattery) is a high-ranking employee of Chrysler; he and the missus (Sela Ward) expect Katey to hang out with people of their well-to-do American enclave.

Katey attends high school classes at the exclusive hotel Miramar and tries to fit in with her peers, but is bothered by their anti-intellectual superficiality and racist attitudes toward the locals.  She has taken some dance training in ballroom dance and has an interest in dance largely because her parents are former ballroom dancing phenoms.

An incident at the pool involving Javier Suarez (Diego Luna) creates a curiosity, which leads Katey to follow him from the hotel to where the "real people" live.  He's a local celebrity dancer with some smooth moves she's never seen; the music and dance is uniquely sensuous.  Like their counterparts in the rock and roll generation up north, young Havanans seek sexual revolution through music and dance.  Also, real revolution against the Batista regime.

Diego and Katey fall for each other, initially as she attempts to have him teach her those smooth moves.  Dancing with Javier helps her to come of age sexually, to "let go," to feel the excitement of release; she also comes to see the need to let go of her parent's strict separation policy from her supposed inferiors.

The climactic scene is a dance contest at the country club.  Javier and Katey enter without her parents' approval.  All hell breaks loose at one point with some of Javier's friends and relatives involved in a shooting and then the pigs busting some heads.  (The connection with the anti-Batista revolutionary fervor is always a stretch.)  The movie ends with the question, will Katey leave with the Americans and will she see him again?

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So is this a ripoff of Dirty Dancing, or homage?

To me, it's certainly homage.  Light homage.  DD2 is a light movie.  Even with the same identical plot elements of the original, the characters are drawn with pad and pencil, not watercolors.  And that's just fine.  It lets the viewer appreciate the sound and the dance without worrying about how true the movie is to its roots.

I thought watching Romola Garai was worth the price of the ticket.  This young woman is tall and stunning; she conveys the growth from awkward, uptight teenage girl to joyous flowing, hot, boogying work of art with flying colors.  And the two are good together, too; the production notes reveal neither Garai and Luna had any professional dance training, so they were picking it up as they went along.  By the end of the movie, they move as one.

The fact Garai is so beautiful can be seen as an objection, if you want to compare the movie to DD1.  (Remember how the Jennifer Grey character was supposed to be a bit of an ugly duckling on top of being uncool.)  And I really don't, except only for comparing the music of the times between two different cultures—fascinating in its own right.

People are right to see the first movie as the classic, the five-star dance movie with girl becoming woman with a sensitive, skilled man from the wrong side of the social divide.  DD2 doesn't take away from that.  DD2 has some fundamental weaknesses as a movie, but that's not the point.  The point is the music, the dancing, and the movement of a beautiful couple, particularly a beautiful young woman coming of age.

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