Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Real Dirty Dancing’ On Fox, Where Celebrities Try To Recreate The Dances From The Classic ‘80s Film

The Real Dirty Dancing is a four-episode reality competition where eight celebrities try to recreate the famous dances from the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, with the four female celebs trying to recreate Jennifer Grey’s moves as Baby and the men trying to recreate Patrick Swayze’s moves as Johnny. The host is Stephen “tWitch” Boss, and the competition takes place at the Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia, where the original film was shot.

THE REAL DIRTY DANCING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The final dance scene from Dirty Dancing, played over a version of “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life”.

The Gist: The celebrities are comedian Loni Love, chef Cat Cora, comedian Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, WWE Hall of Famer Brie Bella, Bachelorette contestant Tyler Cameron, High School Musical actor Corbin Bleu, Backstreet Boys member Howie Drough, and former Charger tight end Antonio Gates. They drive up to the lodge in classic cars, get introduced to each other and tWitch, and they walk into the bar set from the movie while carrying watermelons, just as Baby did.

They all dance with each other and just have fun, then tWitch announces the pairings: Cat and Corbin, Loni and Tyler, Brie and Antonio, Howie and Anjelah. They have 24 hours to rehearse a dance routine using music from the film and present it at a performance in the same room. The women will judge who is the best “Johnny” and the men judge who is the best “Baby.” The winners get to choose new partners for the next challenge, which will end up eliminating one team.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Real Dirty Dancing feels like a hybrid of Dancing With The Stars and Flirty Dancing.

Our Take: One thing we need to give credit for with this show: The Real Dirty Dancing does a nice job in recreating the feel of the film’s most famous location shots, showing the celebrities recreating scenes like Grey’s solo dancing montage as she crossed a particular bridge. Another thing the show gets credit for is really making an effort to get the contestants moving, despite the fact that almost all of them admit that they don’t dance or haven’t danced for many years.

There’s nothing particularly annoying about the show, but there’s nothing all that thrilling about it, either. The opening montage shows some of the celebrities saying they’ve grown from the experience, and they’ve learned about themselves, etc. And it does feel like, when the pairings have to recreate Dirty Dancing moves like Swayze’s famous lift of Grey, things could get funny. But it does seem like the dance partners will get their acts together by the end of each episode, even if their performance won’t quite rise to the level that we saw on our screens 35 years ago.

We did enjoy seeing folks like Love and Cora, who are around our age, giving themselves over to the process. Cora did some of the best work among all the dancers, which made us forget that she related Baby’s relationship with the working-class Johnny allowed her to be comfortable as an openly gay person in the late ’80s. We love the sentiment but thought the linkage was a bit of a stretch.

Sex and Skin: The dancing is dirty, but it’s still all pretty family friendly.

Parting Shot: After the best Baby and Johnny are picked, everyone walks out of the room, very chummy after the fun shared experience.

Sleeper Star: We mentioned Cora, but we also appreciated Gates admitting to the fact that as a former NFL star, dancing and being vulnerable was discouraged. Was he the smoothest dancer out there? No, but he helped Brie bring out a sexiness that she didn’t think she had.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are distractions that show us that the entire 24 hours aren’t spent rehearsing a dance routine, as the men try to recreate the scene where Baby first saw Johnny. tWitch says that he’s using the opportunity to see how they can act like Johnny, but it just seems like it’s there as comic relief.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Real Dirty Dancing is a mindless distraction if you’re in the mood for it. It’s got plenty of nostalgia for the film baked in, and it seems that celebs are game. But the show is about as memorable as what you had for breakfast.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.