Dirty Dancing, like Fox’s recent remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, suffers from being pre-taped, and therefore having nothing to distinguish it from the far superior original movie other than incessant advertising interludes. This made-for-TV remake, directed by Wayne Blair, is the latest in a fleet of extravagant television musicals, with ABC seemingly panicking in its rush to capitalize on a heaving new trend (its upcoming production of The Little Mermaid will be performed in October in a mind-bending amalgam of animation and live performance). If you’re determined to tune in on Wednesday evening, rest assured there will be ample commercial breaks during the turgid three-hour running time to ponder all of them. Houseman tells his wife she needs to leave? Is that Jennifer Lopez’s former toyboy juggling watermelons? The questions, they abound. What was ABC thinking? How could a simple remake go so wrong? How did the wholesome family location of Kellerman’s become a raunchy karaoke joint where Katey Sagal performs such a steamy rendition of “Fever” that an aghast Dr. And there’s the most compelling story, a Wide Sargasso Sea-inspired spinoff starring Debra Messing as a lonely housewife coming to terms with the turbulent depths of her own desire. There’s a musical, in which Breslin and Nicole Scherzinger mime along to their own singing voices in a strange dance rehearsal while half-heartedly exploring the idea that power emanates from the vagina. There’s the one Abigail Breslin’s starring in, an emotionally textured and realistic coming-of-age story about a clumsy but engaging wallflower. There’s the most obvious one, a frame-by-frame remake of the original that’s as awkward and ill-conceived as Gus Van Sant’s 1997 carbon copy of Psycho. Inside ABC’s tonally bizarro update of the seminal 1987 romantic drama Dirty Dancing are about four different projects trying to get out.
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