Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick,
And think of you
I love Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. I love it so much my best friend wrote the lyrics to Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time on a piece of paper for me and framed it and it was the best present I ever got. Time After Time is going to be the first dance at my wedding. Not with my husband. With my best friend.
There is literally is no greater film and I am using literally in the correct sense here; it's feminist as hell, funny as fuck and those outfits? On point. It's the best film ever.
Anyways - it's going to be made into a musical. Sadly it's going to premiere in Seattle (that's like, 4,786 miles away according to Google) so going to see it isn't really an option. Instead, if anyone wants to help me crowdfund a UK version I'd be well up for that.
Obvs one of the big draws of the film is the girls' (and Alan Cumming - hi Eli from T_he Good Wife_) dance routine to Time after Time. Because back in the days where everything was OK and the world wasn't a big scary place that was out to get us, dance routines were in; from The Spice Girls to the Macarena to Monica and Ross on Friends to the ones you used to make up with your best friends to Will Smith's Big Willie Style (just me?), the humble dance routine was an international pasttime.
Here's some of the best.
1. She's All That
It's a crying shame that Usher, a dance king, is criminally underused in this scene but, look hard enough and you'll see Wade Robson of Wade Robson's Dance Project as one of the extras (he's the one with the spiky blonde hair). Great fashion inspiration and a devastatingly misleading portrayal of what our own prom would look like.
2. 13 Going On Thirty
What a very weird and odd and kind of inappropriate film. Mark Ruffalo falling for a 13 year old? Messed up. Also what's Andy Serkis doing not being Gollum? Anyways, the dance is fun.
3. Napoleon Dynamite
We've all been Napoleon Dynamite performing a dance to Jamiroquoi's Canned Heat to a bunch of blank faces before at some point in our lives. Ironically, a lot of people now use these moves IRL. Including me.
4. High School Musical
Back before Zac Efron was making films like Bad Neighbours and Bad Grandpa (sorry Zac), he was the floppy haired teen dreamboat who wore terrible clothes and lipsynced for his life to cheesy pop songs alongside Vanessa Hudgens and a similarly dressed cast of Disnified extras in High School Musical. Oh it was great. So great.
5. Silver Linings Playbook
Despite David O' Russell's misgivings, this film was a beautiful, accurate and sensitive depiction of mental health. The beautifully bonkers dance routine at the end? The icing on the cake.
6. Step Up
Channing Tatum needs to be in here somewhere - Magic Mike could have been a good option but mixed with wife Jenna Dewan Tatum? Solid gold. What a couple. The final dance routine from the movie set they met on seems appropriate.
7. Coyote Ugly
Tyra Banks, Mr Big's wife Natasha and some other girl wearing no clothes and dancing for a whole bunch of baying men might not be the most feminist thing of all time but oh honey, what I woudn't give for a pair of Tyra Bank's leather trousers in today's world.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.