Cavalcade of Awesome

I love movies. If you read this blog, you know this. I also love dancing. If you’ve seen me dance, I’m sorry. The wife and I were watching Little Miss Sunshine the other night and we started talking about how much we love little Olive’s dance routine at the beauty pageant. This led to discussion about other dances in other movies we loved so that, naturally, led to this blog article. It’s surprising how often a scenario like this will lead to an article. Maybe I should wear this shirt 24-7. My wife would then counter me by wearing this shirt.

Before I begin the list, I’m going to lay down a couple ground rules. The movie can’t be a musical. Those invite more professional dance routines and don’t have the same feel as a comedic dance routine in a movie that has no singing. Also, the movie can’t be about dancing. That one is for obvious reasons. I’m mainly thinking about random, comedic dance routines in the middle of a movie that serve no other purpose than to make you laugh. Now, I know I’m going to miss one, so if I forgot your favorite, sound out on the message boards.

So, without further ado, here is my list of Best Random Dances in a movie.

Olive Hoover’s talent routine in Little Miss Sunshine – I had to start with this one as it’s the movie that started the whole discussion. I’ve seen this movie twice since I started writing this article. It is hilarious. Funny situations and family members, great script, interesting locations. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and rent it. The main attraction, and the reason it gets on this list, however, is Olive Hoover’s dance routine at the beauty pageant. It’s talked about throughout the whole movie, you never know going into the pageant scenes what is going to happen. When it does, it’s like a bullet train to Awesome City. I dare you not to laugh at it.

Napoleon’s election dance routine in Napleon Dynamite – This one is classic. I am almost over Napoleon Dynamite as it’s WAY over quoted and I’ve seen it so many times. However, the dance is still classic. Jon Heder gets it done in his signature role. How great is that Jamiroquai song? I use it when I run, it always gets me going.

Ronald does the African Anteater Ritual in Can’t Buy Me Love – For many people, this is Patrick Dempsey’s signature role. It’s a great movie with a great premise. About halfway through, we get treated to Dempsey doing the African Anteater Ritural in the middle of the class dance. As expected, all of the popular kids follow suit until the entire class is doing it. Steph’s favorite show right now is Grey’s Anatomy, so watching McDreamy bust out this most ridiculous of dance moves is like chugging a giant keg of awesome. Interesting trivia, Seth Green plays Dempsey’s younger brother in this movie. Green also guested several episodes on Grey’s Anatomy, but I don’t think they had any scenes together. Come on Shonda Rimes, opportunity was knocking to revive the Anteater Ritual, why didn’t you answer?

Starsky and Dancin’ Rick’s battle in Starsky & Hutch – This is a really funny movie. My wife and I can quote this all day. One of the best parts is when Ben Stiller’s Starsky mistakenly puts cocaine in his coffee instead of sugar and gets all hyped up. He goes to a dance club and challenges disco stud Dancin’ Rick to a dance battle. To top it off, the battle is emcee’d by Patton Oswalt. “1, 2, 3, 4…we’ve got Disco War!” It doesn’t get any funnier than this. Check out Stiller’s “driving the disco big rig” maneuver. So awesome. The below clip is 11 minutes long because I couldn’t find a shorter version. Let it load then skip to 4:20 to see the dance battle.

Ted and Elaine’s dance in Airplane! – Classic boy meets girl, then boy disco dances with girl to Bee Gees while two manish girl scouts fist fight around them. Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. I especially love when Ted is thrown into the audience, then pops back out onto the dance floor and does the John Travolta disco point in the air and you hear the gunshot sound effect. That has ALWAYS made me laugh.

Robin’s dance battle with the Countess in Once Bitten – I don’t know how many of you have seen this, but it’s your typical teen ’80s movie. One of Jim Carrey’s earliest movies, it has an awesome dance scene in the middle during the school Halloween dance. Jim Carrey and his girlfriend in the movie are dancing and Lauren Hutton’s Countess arrives to bite Carrey. What follows is a high energy, choreographed dance routine to an awesome ’80s pop song named “Hands Off”. My wife and I love it. You gotta wonder what the other high school kids are thinking. I mean, they all back off the dance floor while Jim Carrey and his girlfriend dance-fight with this older lady in a pants-less tuxedo. WTF?! TOO. MUCH. AWESOME.

Stiffler’s Dance-off with Bear in American Wedding – Stiffler is one of the great obnoxious characters in movie history and I’ll say it right now, Seann William Scott is underrated as an actor, especially as a comedic actor. When he’s playing “nice Stiffler” for the benefit of January Jones’ character, it’s some of the funniest stuff in the movie. American Pie was great, Part 2 blew, but this third installment of the Pie series was probably my favorite. One of the best scenes involves Stiffler and the boys going into a gay bar and getting into a run-in with Bear, the gay dress designer. Classic music, classic dance moves.

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This entry was posted on June 19, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under dance, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags dancing, lists, movie review, movies, pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.