Taking Sides: Titanic Vs Dirty Dancing Vs Pretty Woman Vs Ghost

Until Million Dollar Baby, Titanic was the only Best Picture Oscar-winner I thought even remotely worth the accolades since that other Eastwood picture... and pretty much nothing else until before I was born.

Off work with a fever today, and watched Pretty Woman for the first time. What a strange one. It's really well made, but at the same time just unbelievably bland - even JR's performance is merely okay. (She looks great though.)

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3a/60/75/3a607505485efecced1ae51d02c01f93.jpg

"Dirty Dancing" has, without any irony, a great soundtrack.
mostly otm, but c'mon dude... "she's like the wind"???

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, November 25, 2004 5:37 AM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she's like the wind is so so so fucking terrible

Pretty Woman was initially conceived to be a dark drama about prostitution in Los Angeles in the 1980s.[4] The relationship between Vivian and Edward also originally harboured controversial themes, including the concept of having Vivian addicted to drugs; part of the deal was that she had to stay off cocaine for a week, because she needed the money to go to Disneyland. Edward eventually throws her out of his car and drives off.

I watched the shit out of Dirty Dancing when I was a pre-teen. Re-watching it recently it ocurred to me how adult it was. Pretty sure that must have been where I learned about abortion.

"I carried a watermelon?" still pops into my head on the reg and, come on people, ORBACH.

lol i watched a bunch of pretty woman last week, it sucked so bad.

The best scene in pretty woman is the whole you work on commission big mistake big huge scene.

Also, George Costanza.

not to mention Roxette

Beaches should have been included in this thread not Titanic (which blows but still).

Beaches, Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, Ghost

the contemporary (well not anymore)(btw more time has passed between dirty dancing and today than had passed between when dirty dancing was set and when it came out) soundtrack in dirty dancing doesn't bother me, it's generally incidental music and no more a part of the 'reality' than the score or whatever would be, but it has always thrown me that at the climax they're suddenly listening to this song that clearly couldn't have come out in 1963 and nobody's weirded out about it.

considering how expectation-bursting huge the two romantic movies patrick swayze made were, it's kind of amazing he didn't make more.

hell even his romance with keanu did pretty good, why the fuck was he making corny family shit like father hood and three wishes just two years later

not sure i'd put beaches in place of titanic (feels like it belongs on a list with fried green tomatoes and steel magnolias), but def agree titanic is out of place. not sure what would work as a fourth though - the contemporaneous absurd/absurdly successful kevin costner and tom cruise movies feel like their own beasts, and dying young underperformed enough to be an obvious Ringo if it was put with the other three.

is edward scissorhands too goth?

Titanic has Victor Garber in a supporting role. Pretty Woman has Ralph Bellamy in his last (?) screen credit. If any of the other films have any similar redeeming (?) virtues, I don't want to know about it.

https://hollywoodhatesme.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/lenny-briscoe.jpg

Titanic > Ghost > Pretty Woman > Death > Dirty Dancing

"she's like the wind" is totally a lost christopher cross song isn't it

DD > Titanic > Pretty Woman > Ghost

The first one is a really good film, the 2nd one is creditable, the other two bleh.

but yeah this is a weird list to start w/

i was trying to find a jpeg or gif of richard gere making his 'i'm loving this blowjob' face in pretty woman, that was a pretty good era for blowjob faces in cinema.

http://www.namebadgesandbuttons.com/store/images/products/mcdonalds%20im%20lovin%20it%20button.jpg

no lie I can't resist this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9BbUqHrWFI

watchin pretty woman its p good

cocktail

I'm watching Dirty Dancing and I forgot that Baby dumps a pitcher of water on that dickhead preppy waiter who is a creep to her older sister because he tries to give her his copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

It deos noteve nbring teh funney!!!1!!1!

ladies and germs, I give you I Love Everything, circa 2004.

The halcyon is past, the decline palpable.

My palps discern no such cline.

I like Dirty Dancing.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/c4425f689a939bcc8334e663d0a7b4df/42f01836b691d09e-a9/s500x750/abfff84effec2de9eeb5c933dcf3ccc50e4625d0.gifv

Crazy thing about this image is that it appears to go faster the more you stare at it.

Pretty Woman sucks, Ghost is lame, and I dgaf abt Titanic

Dirty Dancing shines like a diamond among all these turds

when i finally got around to seeing titanic a few years ago i thought it was actually pretty good tbh. haven't seen dirty dancing but i can't imagine ever wanting to rewatch the other two.

Pretty Woman sucks, Ghost is lame, and I dgaf abt Titanic

Dirty Dancing shines like a diamond among all these turds

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, August 3, 2020 9:31 PM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otfm how is this even a question

Otm. Dirty Dancing by a million miles.

Titanic plays in the first half as a predictable period romance, then it flips over into epic with a slight suggestion of horror. It's OK enough as such BIG films go. I might think about watching it again in a decade or so. If I'm bored.

Ghost is schlocky nonsense that had a few laughs here and there to partly redeem it. Pretty Woman just sounds very bad, so I will never see it.

Dirty Dancing sounds like it might be fun schlock, but I've never seen it.

Pretty Woman is the only one of these I’ve seen more than once (my sister wore the VHS out during our teen years) and, I dunno, I guess its kind of a guilty pleasure. I credit Hector Elizondo and Ralph Bellamy’s supporting work for most of the affection I have towards it.

Are we comparing these films on their entertainment value or on their class politics?

On both axes, Dirty Dancing reigns supreme. James Cameron is only capable of feigning outrage at injustice; in all of his films, he fetishizes it. And as for Pretty Woman, well, it just scrubs sex work of its exploitative dimension.

In Dirty Dancing, it is the proletariat Patrick Swayze who wins in the end, exposing the shallow prejudices of the resort members, especially Baby’s father. And he doesn’t have to die for this either. In that movie, liberation is thinkable.

*proletarian

i'm pretty sure poster "c taylor" in 2004 was not asking us to compare these films on their class politics, and i'll respond in their spirit.

dirty dancing is an incredible movie born of the specificity of its setting and the joy of watching two young people who are in insanely good shape dance and have sex. it's unimpeachable.