It's a movie best seen through the hazy amber filter of '80s nostalgia, and if you're watching it without those rose-colored glasses on, God help you.

| May 27, 2016

I loved this movie. It seems to dream itself, as it tells the story of a young girl who comes alive in the summer of 1963.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 20, 2015

What seems an enjoyable piece of fluff about a summer camp romance is, in its own quiet way, a powerful morality tale.

| Dec 18, 2014

The dancing here brings out the sensual dreaminess of the songs. Dirty Dancing -- what a great title! -- is such a bubbleheaded, retro vision of growing up in the sixties (or any other time) that you go out of the theatre giggling happily.

| May 6, 2013

If the ending of Eleanor Bergstein's script is too neat and inspirational, the rough energy of the film's song and dance does carry one along, past the whispered doubts of better judgment.

| Mar 25, 2013

Although the plot is sometimes implausible, the movie's music, dancing and romantic spirit carry a lot of it. In addition, Dirty Dancing has the virtues of a female main character (a bit unusual in a coming-of-age movie) and an interesting setting.

| Mar 25, 2013

Smart and funny, touching and unabashedly sensual.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 25, 2013

This is a shapely film, considered and concise. And if its rhetorical slickness eventually covers up its emotional core, that slickness has a pleasure of its own.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 25, 2013

While the music on the soundtrack is predictably overloud, the period detail is refreshingly soft-pedaled.

| Feb 12, 2008

The dance finale between Gray and Swayze, although an obvious crowd-pleaser, is performed to a contemporary song clearly intended for the charts, which blows the period feel right off the dance floor.

| Feb 12, 2008

Good production values, some nice dance sequences and a likable performance by Grey make the film more than watchable.

| Feb 12, 2008

An animated rendering of its characters is virtually the only thing preventing the formulaic Dirty Dancing from being another one of Disney's crappy romances.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 1, 2007

The purest spirit of the 1980s is distilled in this amiable film.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 10, 2007

Endlessly quotable, strangely fascinating and immensely charming.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 9, 2007

The film's easy charm, infectious soundtrack and tidy choreography should still win over new fans as well as old.

| Jan 26, 2006

Dirty Dancing works best when it's most direct and unpretentious.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2003

Indefensible, but irresistable. Nobody puts this movie in the corner!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 4, 2003

Chick flicks have hardly been bettered.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2003

I have to admit to feeling some dangerously warm fuzzies for this 1987 movie.

| Mar 10, 2003

The movie plays like one long, sad, compromise; it places packaging ahead of ambition.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 1, 2000