Missouri Skydiving
A Thinking Male's Guide To Patrick Swayze's Best Film Ever
I have to admit it, I really liked Patrick Swayze. Some disclaimers are in order: I'm straight, I thought he was largely a one-trick pony as an actor, and in the late '80s, my smug college friends and I made a cottage industry out of mocking his entire existence.
Yet, long before his immensely valiant, fight-the-good-fight, dignity in the face of impending mortality, I decided I really liked Patrick Swayze. His marriage to wife Lisa in1975 actually made it to the "death do us part" finishing line as stated in wedding vows. Tell me the last time that happened with a major Hollywood figure. Even Swayze's really bad movies, like City of Joy set in India or Black Dog, which teamed our hero with Meatloaf and Randy Travis on what one assumes was not the studio's biggest budget film of 1998, are still good for unintended humor. More predictably, when Swayze recently died from pancreatic cancer, nearly every television and Internet eulogy focused on the two movies that he will certainly be best remembered for, Dirty Dancing and Ghost. As popular films go, neither is bad, and indeed both certainly have their merit and charm. That Swayze could pull off such lines as, "No one puts Baby in the corner, " with a straight face is itself an amazing feat. Dirty Dancing is ultimately hard to resist for its camp value, what with Jews dancing in the Catskills and all. The only thing I would have changed is the ending. Baby's dad, the pompous doctor, deserved a good ass-whooping. Thus, I yearned for an Oedipal showdown between papa and Swayze's Johnny Castle character for Baby's hand, with Johnny taking the good doctor's scalpel and gutting him but good. "The Time of Their Lives, " indeed.Ghost is less memorable for my money. I saw it when it came out in the summer of 1990 and have no desire to view it again. It was okay, not horrible, not great, somewhat hokey. The cast contained superior talent to Dirty Dancing, with Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, but the film doesn't have the staying power of Dirty Dancing. For example, my own children, all born well after either film was released, have asked to view Dirty Dancing multiple times but have never requested Ghost from Netflix or the video store. Still, both of these blockbusters are unabashed chick flicks. I'm certainly no misogynist; female-oriented movies are a valuable and needed genre within the film industry. From "The Way We Were, " to "Boys on the Side, " to "The Notebook, " among many others, such films are an integral part of the Hollywood machine. As a thinking adult, I much prefer such semi-weepy fare to mindless gore, for example. Having said all that, the eulogies to Swayze all omitted what I strongly believe to be his best role and his best movie from a male's perspective, and if you thought I was going to site Roadhouse for that honor, you are sorely mistaken. That film is a mess, from the unlikely plot to the cheesy acting. Swayze, as a PhD turned mercenary bouncer who cleans up a bar called the Double Deuce in that booming metropolis, Jasper, Missouri, is hardly the stuff of classic cinematography. "Unintentionally laughable" might be the best description for this seeming parody of the old western film sensibility. Swayze's character, Dalton, carries his own medical chart with him in case he needs to be stitched, bandaged, or otherwise medicated after a trying night of barroom brawling. And of course, the physician attending to his needs is a statuesque blond (Kelly Lynch), who is bedded by Dalton the PhD bouncer in short order after being patched up. That's some health care reform I can get behind. Movie reviewer Simon Barber summarized Roadhouse as "Sleazy sex and weak dialog. Unbelievable characters." Amen, Brother. This is certainly not the Swayze film for the discerning male. By Keith Mitchell - For a long, long time, I taught high school. I loved it. Besides writing, a main passion is travelling globally. High on my list of places to go that are yet unseen: Morocco, Vietnam, Finland. I have three k...
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