The Ampersand’s Weekend Watchlist offers bingeable movie recommendations bundled into nifty little themes. Our recs for your weekend movie marathon: movies with fun out-of-the-blue dance breaks.
Weekend Watchlist: 5 Movies with Fun Random Dance Breaks
For the past weekends, we’ve been showing appreciation for the perfect pairing of scene and song. We’ve curated movies with great background music and movies with memorable singing moments. This weekend, let’s put the spotlight on dance.
But wait! Pause that pirouette because only non-dance and non-musical movies are taking the center stage here. And as usual, our recos are limited to movies currently available for streaming in the Philippines.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
This John Hughes movie gave us not just a teen classic, but also a dance scene so iconic that even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, youngest woman ever to be elected in the US Congress, just had to recreate the dance moves in her college days. AOC swapped the original scene’s “We Are Not Alone” for Phoenix’s “Lisztomania”.
Watch as a brain, an athlete, a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal dance their detention away.
Where to watch: Netflix
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Another John Hughes teen movie, another memorable dance sequence. In this show stopping number—complete with a parade and a marching band—cocky teenager Ferris Bueller lip syncs to The Beatles’ Twist and Shout.
This scene was so popular that it propelled The Beatles back to the Top 40, more than 20 years after the song’s initial release.
Where to watch: Netflix and YouTube Movies
A Knight’s Tale (2001)
We know, we know. We seem to find a way to bring Heath Ledger into every conversation. Sorry, not sorry.
Two years after making viewers swoon to his marching band song number in 10 Things, Heath Ledger starred in the medieval comedy film, A Knight’s Tale. The movie features an epic dance sequence led by Ledger’s character, William Thatcher, a peasant pretending to be a knight.
Like many of the creative choices in the movie, the dance scene is anachronistic—making use of David Bowie’s “Golden Years”.
Where to watch: YouTube Movies
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” isn’t exactly cutesy rom-com material. In this movie however, Jennifer Garner’s Jenna Rink, a 13-year-old girl stuck in the body of her future thirty, flirty, and thriving self, starts a grand zombie dance sequence in an attempt to revive a mostly dead party.
At first it was just Jenna and her youthful energy on the dance floor, but everyone joins in soon enough to make a killer “Thriller” dance party. Michael Jackson, whomstve?
Where to watch: HBO Go
Paddington 2 (2017)
Paddington is an adorable Peruvian bear who found a lovely home in the big city. In this sequel, Hugh Grant plays the flamboyant villain, Phoenix Buchanan.
Buchanan is extra AF so he goes all out in this larger-than-life musical number: umbrellas, spotlight, harness, fireworks, lots of glitter, and an actual Broadway song. The Prime Minister must be proud.
Where to watch: Netflix
Honorable Mention: 500 Days of Summer
500 Days have already been included in a previous Weekend Watchlist because of the reality vs. expectations scene accompanied by Regina Spektor’s music. But, it’s important to mention this equally iconic flash mob scene set to Hall & Oates’s impossibly catchy “You Make My Dreams”.
Patriz Biliran and Regina Peñarroyo co-run The Ampersand and write blog articles in their free time.
