First of all, the good. The music was fairly good. If the actors did their own singing, they did a decent job. Also, once you got past the two leads, the actors were pretty good.

The bad was the dancing and connection between the main characters. Unlike the original, you see no emotion between them. The dancing was not even near the original in quality. While the backup dancers were very good, the leads reminded me of the week 4 participants on "Dancing With The Stars". Most of the dancing was shot around the dancing. Few full body dance steps were seen as most shots were upper body shots leaving us to wonder what their feet were doing.

I did like the idea that Baby was watching the stage version and reminiscing about that summer. The ending gave some closure to their future lives.

I have seen the original, the stage version and now the remake. The original is still far and away the best, the stage version a distant second and the remake not worth your time. Neither capture the character development and emotion of the original.

While the original 'Dirty Dancing' is not one of my all-time favourites, the soundtrack, dancing (the final dance number is iconic for good reason) and chemistry between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey still mesmerise and it is easy to see why it was a career-defining role for Swayze.

Let's get this off the bat. With me, there is no prejudice towards/against remakes and re-doings, there are some good ones out there but there are just too many where one just doesn't see the point when they lose anything that was so impressive with their originals (the 'Psycho' and 'The Wicker Man' remakes are notorious examples). Will admit to sitting down to watch the 2017 'Dirty Dancing' with dread, not because of the whole remake thing but because it really didn't look good from the trailer and the casting was bizarre.

After watching, while not as diabolical as feared or heard 'Dirty Dancing' (2017) was still a big disappointment. To me there were redeeming values and there are certainly far worse remakes around, but it does make the chief mistakes of having no point to it (other than introducing the story to younger audiences or something) and for losing what made the original 'Dirty Dancing' so winning.

Starting with 'Dirty Dancing's' redeeming qualities, the soundtrack is great, very catchy and makes the foot tap. The best performances come from Sara Hyland and surprisingly Nicole Shertzinger, the latter on paper seemed like a completely insane casting choice but she was charming and was one of the better singers and dancers in the cast.

Bruce Greenwood, apart from the singing, also does well, if not in the same league as Jerry Orbach. Really liked what was done with Lisa who is actually much more interesting and better developed here rather than being a just there figure/plot device. The one improvement over the original to me. Her and Jake were the only decently developed characters and her subplot was the only one that properly worked.

However, there is a lot wrong with this 'Dirty Dancing'. The two leads are badly miscast, they are all wrong on their own and even more disastrous together. Abigail Breslin looks dreadfully stiff and vacant throughout, especially in the dancing, while Colt Prattes' performance lacks charisma, swagger or charm, his dancing is also not natural and it was disconcerting to see a Johnny that looked like he had just come from auditioning for a vampire film.

Rest of the cast do what they can, but with very little to do and bad writing. In terms of singing, Shertzinger is by far the best, actually having a great range, an appealing tone, agile style and the ability to sing on pitch. Nobody else in the cast achieved that feat. As for the dancing, again apart from Shertzinger that was awful all round, especially for Baby and Johnny, robots move with more natural grace. Anybody expecting what made the "Time of My Life" scene so iconic are best looking to the original, there is nothing of that amount of daring or ingenuity.

Production values look too glitzy, clean and polished and much of the directing is decidedly routine. The script is cheesy and undercooked throughout, while the story has no passion, no dirt, no sexual tension, anyone or anything worth rooting for and magic. It goes on for too long and is bloated by too many subplots that are either not fully explored or pointless, for example the one with Marjorie and Jake could have worked but took too much time and didn't really go so far.

As has been said, the ending is terrible, one of those rare endings that is enough to rate something significantly lower automatically, far too downbeat and contradictory and going against all of 'Dirty Dancing's' themes (which are not explored very well either).

Overall, not THAT dire but a real disappointment in most areas. 3/10 Bethany Cox