8. Footloose Kids Suddenly Know How To Dance – Footloose
Putting aside for a moment Footloose‘s ridiculous premise and entertaining that this town really exists, there’s a quality that its teenage population shares that makes absolutely no sense. The idea of a town where dancing is outlawed is insane enough, but imagine for a moment that it exists. Imagine living in such a town – growing up there, in fact.
The sad but realistic truth of such a town would be that no-one (of the younger generation, at least) would actually know how to dance. With adults who are forbidden from demonstrating how to move your body in time with music, it’s safe to say that the teenagers of Bomont only have the faintest clue of how to dance. Even though the practice should be relatively intuitive, being a good dancer requires at least a marginal amount of practice, which is something that Bomont’s teens have never been allowed to have.
In the film’s final scene, however, all of Bomont’s teens engage in a group dance scene to end all dance scenes. Although they start out with some rusty skills, by the time the scene is over, there’s world-class breakdancing and a choreographed group number that there’s no way was ever spontaneous. As Footloose doesn’t even come close to explaining how a town that bans dancing has a contingent of the world’s greatest dancing teenagers hidden among its population, this particular scene makes absolutely zero sense.