DVD review: 'Footloose' (Blue-ray)

Cocky city boy Ren McCormack is a rebel with a cause, and his cause is to defy the straight-laced prudes of a dusty little Bible-belt burg and restore rock ’n’ roll music and dancing to the town’s repressed teens, just in time for the prom.

That’s the essential storyline of the mini-classic 1984 musical teen saga “Footloose,” which made a star of Kevin Bacon, introduced a slew of ’80s pop hits and is now poised for a big-budget remake scheduled to hit the multiplexes on Friday.

For purists and skeptics of needless Hollywood recycling of perfectly good originals, the first “Footloose” is also dancing its way onto DVD shelves in a spiffy Blu-ray edition that features a fairly uninspired video transfer, crisp and sharply re-mastered audio tracks and a treasure trove of informative video extras.

Directed by veteran Herbert Ross (“The Goodbye Girl,” “Steel Magnolias”) from a solid if formulaic script by Dean Pitchford, “Footloose” is said to be loosely inspired by events that took place in 1978 in the rural, religious farming town of Elmore City, OK. Dancing reportedly had been banned in the community for nearly 90 years when a group of high school students rose up to challenge the taboo.

Pitchford’s version cast the story with the cool, Chicago hipster Ren (the relatively unknown Bacon, 24 at the time) as the new kid at school in the conservative little midwestern town of Bomont. The old fuddy-duddies of the town – led by well-meaning but seriously uptight preacher Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) – uphold a strict ban on pop music and dancing, seeing them as the devil’s enticements.

Ren, naturally, resists and predictably strikes up a romance with the good reverend’s cute, blond but deceptively dark-spirited daughter Ariel (Lori Singer). He has a confrontation with the school bully and eventually rallies his classmates to defy the old order, confront the pious preachments of Rev. Moore and push everyone toward a rousing, happy-feet musical climax.