Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights

by Bill Henry on Feb.27, 2004, under Bill Henry's Movie Reviews

Truth be told, I did not have the time of my life. But then I always thought the first Dirty Dancing a tad overrated. Not really a sequel so much as a rewrite, this version uses the title and features one character in the same occupation as in the 1987 Jennifer Grey-Patrick Swayze vehicle. More puzzling than the question of why wait 17 years to make this movie is why transport it to the late â€˜50s pre-revolutionary Cuba that has already been depicted in such films as The Godfather, Part II, Cuba, and Havana. And none of this is to say that Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is bad, it is just insignificant.
It basically follows the same pattern as its name-only predecessor. The demure daughter from the haves side of the social equation falls in love with the help and then enters the big dance contest. The setting has been moved to Cuba in the final months before Fidel Castro makes his triumphant push into Havana just prior to Michael Corleone discovering that it was his brother Fredo who betrayed him to Johnny Ola and Hyman Roth. But meanwhile in this movie, the Miller family has moved to Havana where Dad (John Slattery) will work for Ford, Mom (Sela Ward) will keep house (or in this case keep hotel room), and the two daughters, Katie (Romola Garai) and Susie (Mika Boorem), will stick close to the American-European enclave and soak up as little of Cuba as possible. But daughter Katie soon goes native and wants to learn to dance to a Latin beat courtesy of pool boy Javier (Diego Luna) whose brother is secretly a Fidelista.
It turns out that Mom and Dad are themselves former ballroom champs, but abandoned the bright lights for regular jobs and family, but still taught their daughters all their dance secrets (one supposes that nobody puts Baby in a box-step). And so Katie and Javier begin practicing for the big Latin ballroom dance contest and prepare to indulge in their forbidden love (or as forbidden as you can get with a PG-13 ratingâ€”it is not so much â€œdirty dancingâ€ as slightly smudged). Our young lovers are not really much in the sparks department anyway, but it is not as if the cookie cutter script and uninspired direction is much interested in helping them out as the script is filled with the usual schlock plot points. Skip to the next paragraph if you have heard any of these before: the pretty alpha female is a bigot who is secretly jealous of our heroine; the boy that our gal is set up with acts the cad; the brainy wallflower is transformed with a new dress and a few dance lessons; and we all learn just a little something.
Perhaps if our mismatched couple were able to provide some sparks, it would make a difference. The dowdiness of our Juliet (never particularly convincing since she is obviously beautiful) seems to infuse her entire performance with a dullardâ€™s quality. And as for the male lead, Luna must dream of his days on the set of Y Tu Mama Tambien where he had an actual movie script.
The only humor in the movie is the opening title card explaining:

Dirty Dancing
Havana Nights
Based on True Events

Location shooting in Puerto Rico subbing for Eisenhower-era Cuba is pretty enough and the dancing is energetic if sporadic. But whatever magic elements came together to make Dirty Dancing a pop hit a generation ago are absent from this tepid, inoffensive brew.