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Dancer, Texas Pop. 81

1998, Movie, PG, 95 mins

Dancer, Texas Pop. 81: Review

DANCER, TEXAS POP. 81
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A modest coming-of-age picture whose charms are so slight a summer breeze could blow them away. Dancer, a town so tiny it's not even on the map, is home to a mismatched quartet of buddies who probably wouldn't be friends if there were anyone else for them to be friends with. Orphaned Keller (Brecken Meyer) lives with his cranky grandpa and can't wait to get out of Dancer: He's the one who made his buddies sign a solemn vow that they'd all be on the first bus to Los Angeles the minute they graduated high school. Terrell Lee (Peter Facinelli) is what passes for a local rich kid, a handsome lothario whose parents expect him to enter the family oil business. Nerdy Squirrel (Ethan Embry) is the town loser, living with his reprobate drunk of a father in a filthy trailer, while John (Eddie Mills) is torn between working on his daddy's ranch and seeing a little of the wide world on his own. Under the watchful eyes of their elders, all of whom seem to know someone who moved to L.A. and wound up living next door to Charles Manson, the friends spend the hours between their Saturday afternoon graduation and the arrival of the Monday morning bus weighing their options, horsing around and trying to decide what's scarier: Leaving the places and people you've known all your life, or staying with them. A labor of love by first-time director Tim McCanlies, a Texas native who completed the script in 1984, this exercise in adolescent nostalgia is the kind of picture that gives "heartfelt" its bad reputation. It's willfully whimsical, cloyingly cute, and by the time everything's over, you're with Terrell Lee on Dancer: It's a pretty boring place. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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