80s and 90s Spontaneous Movie Group Dance Scenes Where Everyone Knows Exactly What to Do

Photo: LA Times

All movies require a certain degree of suspended disbelief. We know and understand that these words and images do not constitute real life, nor should they. If we wanted real life, we'd go out and live it. If we want a brief period of escapism, we shell out ten bucks to watch other people lead more exciting lives.

Despite this understanding that movies should not be taken as real life, there are some scenes that make it more difficult than others. In real life, very few of us are trained dancers who have spent grueling hours under the guidance of professional choreographers and stage blockers. In movies, though, we're just supposed to ignore the fact that the cast has put in hours of dance rehearsals (or better yet, have body doubles) and just assume that there lives are just so exciting and carefree that it's impossible to not spontaneously break into well-organized group dancing. It's awfully convenient when someone spontaneously breaks out into dance and their costars know all the complex prechoreographed steps, but we just accept it as movie truth.

This trick was especially prominent in 80s and 90s movies, with directors throwing in a spontaneous eruption of dance whenever things seemed to be getting a little slow. Nothing like a foray into the art of dance to get things moving again. Except, you know, some plot twists and character developments. Honestly, though, that would probably be asking too much from these films. It's almost better to just take their cop-out flashy spontaneous dance distractions for what they are.

Regardless of their plot-thickening merit, these scenes are pure fun. They're almost enough to make us wish our current coworkers would toss aside their desk chairs and assemble into formation for a grandiose musical number. Until that happens, though, you'll have to rely on these clips to hold you over for your spontaneous dance fix:



She's All That


Let's start strong here with the classic 90s teen movie example, She's All That. This movie is not exactly grounded in high school reality, so it's not wonder they were able to pull off this spontaneous eruption of choreographed prom dancing. Depending on your definition of "pulling off", of course. The scheming prom attendees got down to the Rockerfeller Skank by Fatboy Slim, proving that a movie doesn't need a wealth of substance to crank out a spontaneous dance number. Well played, She's All That.



Encino Man


I'm not embarrassed to admit my boyfriend and I watched this entire movie in full this weekend. Okay, I lied, I'm incredibly embarrassed. What I thought was a hilarious caveman comedy is actually possibly the worst movie ever made, though this glaring fact won't stop me from loving it unconditionally. This ending dance scene was indeed the inspiration for this entire post, so I refuse to concede that I wasted 88 minutes of my life engrossed in this glaringly awful piece of 90s cinematic ridiculousness. The entire movie is so hokey and nonsensical, this dance number almost seems like a shot of realism.



Austin Powers


As a parody, Austin Powers was a prime candidate for a group dance number. It was already mocking everything these movies stood for, so why not throw in some groovy swinging moves well-timed to catchy theme music? It was a dance that spurned a thousand imitators, each more annoying than the last, but you must admit the original was pretty entertaining.




Ferris Bueller's Day Off


I've never been in a marching band so I can't say for sure, but I imagine it's not the kind of thing you can just orchestrate with a snap of your fingers. Unless you're Ferris Bueller, that is, in which case the world is your parade float. Like I said, though, I'm not expert in this arena, so it's possible my inexperience as a marching band member is throwing off my judgment a bit.

In this now-classic scene, Ferris performs a spur-of-the-moment show-stopping version of "Twist and Shout" atop a parade float at the Von Steuben Day Parade in Chicago. Everyone joins in on the dancing, from his Oktoberfest costume-clad floatmates to scaffolding-bound construction workers. It's classic John Hughes: totally over the top, yet almost believable in the moment.



Footloose


This one isn't quite a stretch considering the whole movie hinges on a dancing equals social freedom plot line, but the dancing is great nonetheless. You've got to admit, these kids seem incredibly at ease with their moves for people who've never danced a step in their lives. Just saying.



Breakfast Club

Breakfast Club Dance from Brandon McGhee on Vimeo.

I still can't watch this clip without yearning for Molly Ringwald's awesomely 80s dance moves. This scene embodies the movie because it pounds each character's two-dimensional stereotype into our heads with their personality-specific dance moves. The wild one is going crazy, the nerd's nerding out, the weird one is going nuts. We get it, they're all different. I'm not sure if I could have grasped at that conclusion without the help of this handy dance scene.



Teen Wolf


Do the wolf, man. Or is it...do the Wolfman? We may never know for sure. Either way, it's cheesy 80s school dancing at its finest.



Fame


I admit, with its 1980 release date it's pretty unlikely many of us children of the 90s grew up with this one, but the scene is just such a classic example of the spontaneous group dance I would be depriving you by leaving it out. At least in this case, most of the group in question is actually made of trained dancers, so it fits in well. Plus, it's just a really catchy song. I'm pretty sure if someone started singing it while I was on the street, I'd bust a move or two also. Probably two.


Reality Bites


This movie was meant to be the defining Generation X film, so it's fair enough that this group doesn't go for the all-out choreography. They're far too cynical and angsty for something that mainstream. No, they're content with their makeshift moves certain to humiliate Ethan Hawke's character. Can you blame him, really? I'm not saying the gas station attendant is there to judge, but if I were him I certainly would be. If nothing else, I'd be judging the hell out of Janeane Garafalo's bangs. What is up with those?


These movies may not be especially reflective of real life, but they're entertaining enough to almost make us believe that a crowd could instinctively just feel the moment was right for breaking into some serious dance moves. Our everyday lives may not contain copious amounts of extemporaneous group choreography, but that just makes it all the more fun to watch.

Girly Board Games

Male readers, you may just have to bear with me on this one. Actually, maybe you should use this as a welcome opportunity to bask in the notion that board games targeted at your demographic did not limit your life goals to princessery and shopping. You guys got to be ninjas and surgeons and we got to worry about getting a zit before our dates. And you wonder why we don't have a woman president yet. She'd probably get a zit before the big inaugural ball and concede. Damn you, Girl Talk, and your powerfully brain-dead life lessons.

I'd like to say this was an isolated phenomenon of archaic norms, and it was what I was planning on saying until I took a stroll down the toy aisle today at Target. Lo and behold, High School Musical Dream Date. That's So Raven Girl Talk. Hannah Montana Mall Madness. As if the frighteningly stereotypical girly game offerings weren't morally void enough, we've added new corporate sponsors and Disney tie-ins. Ah, the sweet scent of moral apathy. Now that's progress.

This genre were certainly not exclusive to the 80s and 90s, though it is more surprising that we upheld such outmoded norms this late in the game (some pun intended). With an increasing focus on gender equality, it seems that game producers chose to ignore any feminist progress and steer us straight toward the mall where they felt we belonged. All we needed was a fake credit card and some plastic crowns and we'd be back on track in no time.

Here is a light (pastel, if you will) selection of the games that kept girls beneath the plastic ceiling* of legitimate board game accomplishment:


Girl Talk



Girl Talk was a sort of innocent-ish truth or dare game that came with preset questions in board game format. It was also a teeny bit like MASH, as our accumulated points won us "fortune cards" that told of our future. Of course, according to Girl Talk, the future we yearned for was focused on marriage, career, children, and so-called "special moments". I'd like to give them some credit for including career, but if the game saddled you with a deadbeat husband and 12 kids, you were pretty stuck.

It being a parent-sanctioned game, the questions and dares were pretty tame. Dares included tasks like "Call a local radio station and dedicate a song to a boy you like!" "Make a prank phone call and hang up!" or "Lap water out of a bowl like a dog!" If you failed to perform the dares, you had to don a bright red zit sticker. On the plus side, if you agreed to be scorekeeper you were to be addressed as "Point Princess". Overall, not a bad deal.


Mall Madness



I know I've ranted on this one before, but it's so truly deserving of relentless bashing. Very few games are so shameless in their complete disregard of all things morally grounded. Mall Madness not only takes the cake on that one, it teaches us to put it on our credit card. We raced around chasing sales and scrambling back to the ATM for cash, which is just what 9-year old girls should be learning about.

The electronic version gave us an eerily disembodied voice, cheerily delivering commands to us. My all-time favorite is "You left your lights on! Go to the parking lot!" Now we're not only frenzied consumers, but vapid ones at that. It's only a few notches up from Teen Talk Barbie's "Math is hard!" and that's being generous.l


For the full post on Mall Madness, click here


Pretty Pretty Princess



This was amongst the most coveted of little girl games, teaching us at a young age that it's okay to play games as long as you end up with some jewelry. Many of us went on to build romantic relationships on that very notion.

The object of the game was to be the first player to collect our designated color of ring, earring, bracelet, and necklace plus the almighty crown. That damn black ring would always thwart our well-intentioned efforts, so we'd have to pawn it off on someone else in order to win. I'm not sure if there was any actual educational value to this game, but it did teach us how to cunningly set up our friends for failure.


Girl Talk: Date Line


I will admit that this game had me totally fooled. I thought that they'd come up with some fantastic technology that somehow converted my boombox cassette player into a predictor of romantic matches. You'd put a boy card and a girl card into this mysterious contraption and a conversation would play from the tape to see if it was a match or not. Only later did I discover that if I played the tape without plugging in that stupid little pink box, it had the exact same conversations. Obviously Milton Bradley doesn't think very highly of young girls if they thought we'd play this over and over again without growing suspicious. Then again, they had me fooled, so maybe they were right on.


Electric Dream Phone



In an age before all 8-year olds had cell phones, this game was awesome, if only because we briefly got to pretend we had our very own phones. It was kind of like Guess Who, only for squealing boy-crazy little girls eager to call up some totally buff hotties. We all went out in search of our secret admirers, though sometimes our hints were not so secret if someone pulled that speakerphone card. We all crossed our fingers to hear the magic words, "You're right! I really like you." We'd spend the better part of our teen years trying to replicate that thrill.


Girl Talk Secret Diary:

I know, I know. How many versions of this game were they going to release? The correct answer was "as many as naive young girls will blindly consume", translating to quite a few. Each one more brainless and boy-crazy than the last, many of us nevertheless adored these games. This version was sort of a cop out, as it was admittedly less involved. It came with a massive diary of some girls secrets. We were supposed to care about them for some reason or other, plus it forced us to divulge our own. It was basically like a confessional with less priest or Real World staff, depending on how you look at it. That is, whether you were raised Catholic or by TV. Just in case you needed clarification on that one.


These may not have been the most enlightened toys on the market, but that didn't stop us from going after them like a pack of shopping-crazed jewelery-adorned date-seeking wolves**. We might not have come out from them smarter or better or stronger or...what was I saying? Oh yeah, these games were pretty worthless, but we loved them all the same. We're all probably a bit more superficial and vapid for it, but at least we've got the balls to cluck like a chicken when Girl Talk tells us to. If nothing more, our subconscious avoidance of zit stickers will serve us well in life. I know it keeps me on my toes.


*I was going to say glass ceiling, but no toy company would have included glass in any of their products. Their lawyers would never go for it.
**In other words, not like wolves at all

Rugrats

As we all know, talking babies are unwaveringly adorable. No matter what they're saying or doing, it's pretty much inevitable that it's going to be heart-string tuggingly cute . If you can throw in some subtle humor for the parents then all the better, but we're pretty much good to go on talking babies alone.

Nickelodeon's Rugrats took the simple question "What do babies do and think when parents aren't around?" and turned it into a cleverly crafted series of humorous episodes. It was heavy on imagination and light on realism, opening for kids a world of make-believe fun. With talking babies. Did I mention the talking babies?

The show premiered in 1991 as part of the Nicktoons cartoon programming block. The premise hinged on the notion that the babies could understand one another whereas the adults could not, which in itself is a pretty attractive notion to child viewers. It was essentially the underpinning of 80s and 90s Nickelodeon programming: kids have their own world that adults can't even begin to understand.This theme gave us both an inflated sense of importance and a satisying denigration of adults, making us feel for once as if we were the ones running the show and the adults were simply there to drive us around.

Rugrats from Matt on Vimeo.

Adults were fans of the show, as well, as it featured a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that undoubtedly went over the heads of juvenile viewers. While the later reworked version of the show relied more on toilet humor and other similarly juvenile gags, the original used cultural references and irony to poke fun at phenomena in the adult world. We laughed at the adults, adults laughed at themselves, and everyone was happy.

As in many children's shows the young characters were largely two dimensional, owing to the fact that children's black and white view of the world left little room for subtelty and character development. While the stereotypes may have gotten a little out of control in later seasons, they were believable enough during the show's golden years. Sure, all of the characters had a "type", but they were good foils for
one another and gave us a spectrum of infant temperaments at which to laugh:



Tommy Pickles, our fearless leader. Tommy was the unofficial chief of the tribe of playpen-dwelling infants, leading his baby pals on all sorts of Muppet Baby-style imaginary adventures. Resplendent in a blue t shirt and diaper ensemble, Tommy looked the picture of baby naivete.




Chuckie Finster, our resident coward. Chuckie has it rough enough with the red hair and square glasses, you'd think they could have gone easy on him personality wise but apparently his loserishness is a package deal. For God's sake, his dad dresses him in a shirt picturing the planet Saturn. You don't get less hip than that. Chuckie's afraid of everything from the potty to The Guy on the Oatmeal Box. To his credit, though, that Quaker guy is a little off.




Phil and Lil Deville, our cutesily rhyming named set of boy/girl twins. Their parents dress them in matching clothes and their personalities verge on deja vu. Lil's got a bow for differentiation purposes, but other than that, they're pretty much the same person.




Angelica Pickles, Tommy's spoiled brat of a first cousin. It's probably wrong to admit that Angelica was my favorite as a child, as she was completely insufferable with a personality akin to nails on a chalkboard. I'm not going to put all of the blame on her, though. Her wealthy parents were less than attentive and even lighter on the discipline front. I'm not going to say I didn't learn a thing or two the remarkably consistent results she got from putting on the waterworks, though.




Susie Carmichael, adorable neighbor. She mainly served to show how awful Angelica was by contrast. She made me want to have a cat named Chowder, too. I mean, seriously. Chowder! How cute is that?


The parents, on the other hand, were a bit better developed as characters. Looking back, they were far more neglectful than I'd initially perceived them to be. Back then it was like, sure, they abandon their children unsupervised for hours at a time, whatever. Now that I'm older and actually know people who have children, it's a tad less believable that any right-minded parent would accidentally leave their children in a cavernous toy store overnight or not notice their 1-year old toting a screwdriver in his diaper. Well, I guess that's why it's just a cartoon.




Stu and Didi Pickles, Tommy's parents, were a well-meaning pair of absentminded grownups. Stu was an idealistic toy inventor, Didi a teacher. Let me just say that Didi should win some sort of best cartoon hair award for that trisected red nest erupting from all sides of her head. That thing is truly awesome.





Betty and Howie Deville, Phil and Lil's parents. Betty was a strong feminist and Howie was well, nothing.




Chas Finster, Chuckie's dad, equally nebbishy to Chuckie. Let's move on.





Drew and Charlotte Pickles, Angelica's yuppie parents. Charlotte had a cell phone permanently glued to her ear before it was the norm, and Drew was basically the anti-Stu. Charlotte is just like Lindsey Nagle from The Simpsons which is convenient because they're both voiced by Tress MacNeille.




Randy and Lucy Carmichael, Susie's parents. She makes jello molds of the Eiffel Tower, he writes for the Dummi Bears. Not too shabby.




Grandpa Lou, Stu and Dru's dad and resident of Didi and Stu's house for the first few seasons. See how all the Pickles' men have rhyming names, too? Is there no end to their cleverness?




And of course, my favorites, Boris and Minka, Didi's parents. For those of us members of the tribe, we didn't find ourselves especially well represented on TV. Okay, behind the scenes, sure, but I'm talking kid's holiday specials. That's what mattered to me as a kid; I didn't care who produced it.

My love affair with these Old Country standbys began when Boris and Minka came to tell the story of Passover and ran well through their Chanukah special. Let's just say it blew Lambchop's Chanukah out of the water.


Like most long-running shows, Rugrats ran out of steam after awhile, running on empty as it shamelessly introduced new characters, released feature films, and then essentially abandoned the premise altogether by aging the kids ten years. As we all know the main draw of Rugrats was that we were dealing with naive babies, so turning them into surly teenagers was probably not a wise move.

We wanted to see these kids eating dog food, participating in beauty contests, staging mini-Westerns at the teeter-totter, or fearing the bathtub drain. We didn't care if they failed algebra or thought that guy from the malt shop was cute. Thus, we can remember them as they were, before the cheap ratings ploys and desperate last-ditch salvage attempts. Back when Reptar reigned the land and Angelica belted out "My Country Tis of Thee" and babies could freely roam about the dangerous adult-free terrain as they pleased.