Footloose

If dancing ever needs a propaganda film, Footloose is it.  The plot is as much a wonderfully told story as a well-built argument: people will dance, whether they're permitted or not, because humans can't help but wiggle.  John Lithgow, one of the best antagonists ever (ever), plays Reverend Shaw Moore, a preacher whose benevolent, but misguided control over a rural town has led it to ban dancing.  Until Kevin Bacon, as Ren McCormack, shows up from Chicago with his charmingly uncombed hair, New Wave-y tie, and a set of acrobatic dance moves, and proceeds to shake loose Moore's anti-dancing arguments with his skilled hip isolations.  While I'm not sure that dancing is in need of any defending, the film's structure also creates the opportunity for fantastic angst-filled and liberating dance sequences.  Most famous is Bacon's iconic Volkswagen pounding sequence in the old train depot, but maybe more fantastic, his bumpkin friend Willard (the late Chris Penn) in his learning-to-dance montage, which ends with his doing some lite-break dancing on the back of a flat-bed.  When McCormack finally forces the town to confront the demons that caused it to ban dancing in the first place and sets up the first school dance in years, we realize how important the town's liberation was for as soon as they overcome their jitters, it turns out that at least half of the student body dance at a high if not professional level.  This final dancing sequence is an appropriately joyful ending to a movie that is well acted throughout with a breakout performance from Bacon, an exuberant performance from Lori Singer as his love interest, and a marvelously sympathetic villain who finally sees the light in Lithgow's preacher.