I’m so mad I’m going to…

A friend posted on Facebook today that Hollywood is planning to remake Dirty Dancing. I don’t know how this has escaped me, but the thought of a remake of this classic ’80s movie—and barely two years after Patrick Swayze’s passing!—seems sacrilege to me. Aside from movies like Dawn of the Dead and Ocean’s 11, the latter of which had over 40 years that lapsed between the two, what remakes are ever done well? What’s even worse is my friend asked if I had seen the trailer for the Footloose update. The answer? No, I hadn’t. And I especially didn’t know it was far enough into completion that it already had a friggin trailer!

I decided to watch it and was completely saddened. The rebellious dancers were doing everything from country line dancing to hip hop. Yet they opted to leave in the angry dance scene that is reminiscent of the original version. It was dances like that that made me fall in love with every ’80s teen movie. Why rip off the angry dance if you’ve made everything else modern? Ugh.

Growing up in the ’80s, I was completely smitten with movies that had great dance scenes. Footloose was a classic:

I wanted to be Sarah Jessica Parker in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun because of the Dance TV dance-off:

There’s the classic scene from The Breakfast Club, and if you see me on the dance floor, you’ll see me use this Molly Ringwald move:

But my favorite? Can’t Buy Me Love‘s African Anteater Ritual, which is still my signature move:

At times, you’ll see the great dance scenes of the ’80s reemerge, but it’s generally for laughs. So come on, Hollywood. Unless you’re Andy Samberg or Flight of the Conchords, can we just stop ripping off of movies that don’t yet need a remake and work on creating something a little more original?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go dance-punch out some rage.