“Do they sell men’s clothes where you bought that hat?”

That is just one of the few good lines missing from the reboot of the classic 1984 movie Footloose, which came out Friday, October 14.  But not all of the changes made to the remake were bad ones.

Co-producer Neil Meron said, “It’s only worth doing if there’s a new way of looking at it.”

Unlike other remakes of old movies, this one takes a modern approach to the story. While still including the title song, “Footloose,” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy,” which became popular through the original movie, the reboot also includes songs like “Fake I.D.” and “Window Paine.” There are no cassettes and no eighties attire, although Ren still drives a yellow bug.

Many of the minor changes amp up the drama. For example, instead of playing chicken with the tractors, Ren gets into a monster bus race with Ariel’s boyfriend Chuck, a professional racecar driver.

Aside from changing small points, the story is essentially the same. City boy Ren MacCormack (with Kenny Wormwald stepping into Kevin Bacon’s shoes) moves to the small churchgoing town where his aunt and uncle live. When he gets there, he finds that the town has some strange rules, the most unfortunate of which is a ban on dancing. In an attempt to lift the ban off the town so that the senior class can have a dance, Ren befriends Willard, whom he teaches to dance, and Ariel, a troublemaker, who also happens to be the preacher’s daughter.

The popularity of the original movie influences some students to see the new Footloose.

“I really liked the old one,” said Loren Roth (’13). “I would go see the new movie because of the old one.”

Other students feel that the Footloose should never have been remade.

Lauren Keleher (’13) said, “The original Footloose was so quintessentially eighties, I couldn’t see the new one.”

There is only one way to tell whether the reboot of Footloose lives up to the original: “kick off your Sunday shoes” and see for yourself.