User reviews

Some reviewers have referred to "Dancer, Tex Pop. 81" as a "Last Picture Show"-lite. How wrong. "Last Picture Show" was dark and depressing; focusing on death, decay and lost hope. "Dancer, Tex Pop. 81", although also set in an extremely small Texas town, is about choices, all of them good. It balances the joys and benefits of small-town life against the youthful yearning to experience the unknown. The movie follows the town's high-school graduating class of all of five students; four young men and a lady. Years ago the men had pledged a sacred oath to leave town together for Las Angeles immediately after graduation. Now three of the four are not so sure. To stay or to go? That's it in a nutshell, as a weekend's events unfold before the fateful bus journey. This is a feel-good movie in the tradition of "American Graffiti". Not nearly as good, but certainly good enough for a night's rental.

This movie really caught the feeling of living in a small town. There are many characters in those towns, and the characters in this movie are entirely representative of what you might find in a small Texas town. Keller has dreamed of leaving for California with his three buddies for years, but on the day before they are to leave, several of them start having second thoughts that their place is really in Dancer and not in Los Angeles. This movie demonstrates the emotions which come in to play when a young person truly realizes that he or she might be seeing really good friends for the last time. It also brings into play the fear that a young man might experience when leaving the relative safety of his small hometown for the big, wide world where everything is an unknown.This movie caught the emotion tied up with leaving that small town and those people who have been your life for 18 years. Filmed in beautiful Ft. Davis, Texas, this is really one of those fine under-appreciated movies that will be enjoyed by movie lovers everywhere.

I had never heard of this movie when I happened on it on cable. When I saw the four teenage boys in the first scene, I braced myself for a typical teen comedy. What I found instead was a gem of a movie about four boys who planned to leave their tiny Texas town after graduation. The film traces the weekend before their planned departure, as the boys are torn between staying in their small community and leaving for Los Angeles. The film does not glorify the small town. It clearly shows that for a restless teen, it can be boring. But it also shows the relationships that develop when there are only a few people of each age in close proximity. The writing is wonderful. Each boy had a distinct personality, and each family is unique. I wish more "small" movies were available. I will recommend this movie, and I look forward to finding more movies made by this writer/director.

This movie was a like a trip back home for me. I grew up in West Texas, and I always knew in that process that I would one day leave it. By no plan or design, somehow it happened, in many stages. Ultimately, where did I find myself? In California, of course.

Now looking back with the help of this movie, I see the simple good of the life I lived back then, when life was slow, plodding even, but placid and enjoyable.

Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 provides a window back in time to the life we used to be able to live. I especially enjoyed the halting conversation between the two ranchers, a conversation of one and two word sentences. These two were so tuned into one-another that they needed very few words to express their ideas, thoughts, and concerns. People should be more like that today.

Dancer, Texas isn't a perfect film, but at least it's watchable. Initially the cast didn't really turn any heads or catch my attention, but the naturalness the actors encompassed in their characters was quite endearing. Considering the lackluster filmographies of the four main characters, this film will be a standout in their careers.

What I especially enjoyed was the fact that the film didn't poke fun at small town life. While small town people are often times ridiculed in most films, McCanlies tries honoring them by portraying their humility and honor. What I especially liked was how slow the film was, a perfect juxtaposition to the speed of small-town life. The only thing I was somewhat down on was the lack of development in terms of father-son relationships. While Terrell Lee's relationship with his father was revealed quite nicely, we didn't get much in the way of Squirrel's or John's father.

Beyond that one little oversight, I felt the film had a solid enough ground to stand on.

I'm not familiar with small-town Texas, but I do believe that this story could be situated anywhere. I'm convinced that all teenagers sooner or later make big plans to leave home far behind, in order to start a 'better' life of their own. And it's exactly that recognizability that will make sure that this movie will not only be liked by the American audience.

Dancer Texas is a small town with only 88 inhabitants. This year there are only four teenagers, with completely different backgrounds, who will graduate from high school. The four are friends and have been planning this day during their entire lives. After the graduation they will leave town for L.A. But as all inhabitants are watching them, give them advice and put bets on who is going to stay and who is going to leave, the four find it much harder to leave home than what they initially expected...

Even though the movie was incredibly slow, especially in the beginning, I must say that I quite liked it. The main reason for that is because I could recognize myself in the four friends. OK, they looked pretty stereotypical, but when you combine them, I'm pretty sure that everybody will find something of himself / herself in them.

Despite the fact that this isn't a perfect movie, I still give this movie a 7/10. The acting was more than OK and the idea behind the story is good. Too bad that they had to use so many stereotypes and didn't dare to come up with a new approach. Otherwise this would have been an absolute masterpiece.

OK, for all you people who came from "smalltown, America" who are complaining about this, you should really think about it. This was a really great movie, that shows that you have it all if you just take a look at what you think you are missing. I grew up in Southern Ca, and i moved to a small town when i was 21, but even growing up in a town just shy of a million people, i got an appreciation for it when i left that i would have never had, had i stayed there. This was a great movie, one i would recommend to anyone looking for a good way to spend an evening. not only does it show that a movie can be good without being raunchy and filled with sex, its worth the time that you spend watching it. I would watch it again.

The movie has some of the best photography I've ever seen of the "Outback of Texas". As far as the portrayal of young people whp are raised in the middle of nowhere, it spoke a universal language?

I think what made it especially intriguing was that the middle of nowhere is sometimes actually some place special.

This movie seemed to start very slowly; but it is a study in character development. As a native of Texarkana, Texas, and as a former inhabitant of two small towns in Pennsylvania, I found the characters and the roles they played in Dancer highly realistic, along with the negative and positive attitudes that the inhabitants of Dancer, Texas, had about their little town. The movie has a lot of humor, when it shows grown men at the high school graduation hardly saying a word to each other; and yet it was a complete conversation, after a fashion.

I would not call this a great movie, but a good one. It reminds me of the small-town joys and pains one sees in "Baby Blue Marine" and "Hoosiers."

As someone who grew up in the area where this film is set, I can tell you that the four male protagonists are waaaay too sensitive.

Four real-life small-town Texas buddies would NOT spend all that time hugging one another and telling each other how glad they are to be friends, even if they were about feeling emotional as they approached high school graduation. Real West Texas boys are far more crude than that.

Small West Texas towns are seething pits of sex, drugs and alcohol (or at least they were in the 1980s and 1990s, and 1970s, and 1960s, and 1950s...) and these kids were rated PG. They hardly even cuss. For a more realistic take on Texas life, rent The Last Picture Show instead.

The other thing that bugged me was that the rich-kid character came from an oil family. That the family oil business was going belly-up was plausible, but there is NO OIL in the mountainous part of the state. It's cattle country.

In 1998, Tim McCanlies had a crazy idea. He made a movie about a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, in which no one gets killed, nothing gets blown up, no one has sex, and there aren't any aliens from outer space. Thank goodness he saw his crazy idea through; the result is a fabulous movie that I saw in the theater in 1998, and I am not sure I have seen a better movie since then.

The setting of the movie is the fictitious town of Dancer, located in Southwest Texas, where the counties are bigger than the states in the northeast and the people are outnumbered by rattlesnakes. The movie begins on Friday, when four boys are graduating from high school. We learn that, while they were in junior high school, they made a "solemn vow" that as soon as they graduated, they were going to get on the next bus to California to make their mark on the world. Easy to say when you're in junior high, and graduation is years away. But now it's here, and the bus is pulling out on Monday morning. The question is whether any of the boys will follow through.

That's pretty much the plot. What's so special? Simple: the relationships between the boys, between each of them and their family members, and between the folks in the town. This movie, like all great movies, is about the characters' reactions to the circumstances they are in. The characters are real, fleshed out not in bold strokes but in nuances, and their actions, not always predictable, are always believable. Most of us have faced the decision whether to leave the town that we grew up in. It is fascinating to watch these teenagers begin to grow into men -- at an accelerated pace, because of their childhood pledge.

Someday, when you are at the video store and you don't know what to get, you will see this on the shelf. Get it. You will be very, very happy.

If you've never seen it and need a drinking game, take a shot or drink every time someone says, "Terrell Lee." It's just a reflection on how poor the writing is.

Sure there are one or two funny scenes but there is no funny dialog. There was a lot of missed opportunities for fun in this movie but I guess they were focusing on dull drama. Forget the fact that everything in the movie occurs in the 36 hours after graduation, it's really a stretch to think one character is finally standing up for himself, one character is just now contemplating college after high school, and the third is just now starting to understand the family business.

The one bright spot is Alexandra Holden. She steals every scene she is in and when she's paired with Breckin Meyer it's cinematic gold. They play well off each other but that may be a nod to Meyer.

Before getting the movie, I was puzzled at the sharp disparity in the comments here. Now I think I understand them!

A character in the movie says something like this: "Some people aren't meant to live in a small town. Some can't live anywhere else." There's truth to that, and I think it's reflected in the differing responses to the movie here.

If you have experienced small-town life, and either love it or at least are wryly comfortable with it, you'll like this movie a lot. You'll feel you've met these people, you've been to their church, you've been at their picnics. You'll enjoy the scenery, the decent neighborliness, the conversations, the characters.

If you're more of a big-city type, you'll be very impatient. Nothing "happens"! No heads explode, no alien invasions, abductions, or even flyovers. No sex, virtually no profanity, no fist-fights. Everyone keeps most of his clothes on. Kids love and respect their parents and families, even when they're a little daft. People fight, but basically care about each other. It's boring - to some!

I offer no judgment, just this filter to help you decide whether the movie's for you. If you like movies that make you ache for small-town life, you'll like this. If you need action and adrenalin, you may very well not. I like both, and I liked this movie.

I spent a pleasant evening last night viewing this superb portrait of americana. I only wish that I had grown up in such a small town. These kids, teenagers, had it all, most of all solid friendships. I never was able to determine for certain how many if any would leave that fateful Monday morning on the journey to Los Angeles, leaving the small town and its people behind. That some left was inevitable. That some stayed was natural. I would have stayed. As the song at the end said, Dancer may not be on the map, Mr. McNally but it ought to be. I agree. My next visit to West Texas will include it. What a delight I have waiting for me. I feel SO good!!!

I walked away from this film with an incredibly good feeling; it was great. It features four young boys on the day of their graduation. They had made a childhood pact to leave their tiny town right after graduation. The audience watches as family interests and friends conflict with hopes, dreams, and practicality. For the record, I'd like to add that this is a great film to see even just for the performances of Breckin Meyer and Ethan Embry. Meyer is the story's dubious hero; he's self-centered but so good-natured and hopeful that you can't help but like him. Embry's character is dirt-poor and has a drunk for a father, but he's so incredibly goofy and sweet that at the end of the movie, you find yourself cheering for him. I recommend this movie to pretty much anyone. There's no sex, no violence, and only a tiny amount of cursing. An especially good movie to watch in groups.

There are some good parts to this movie but overall it is very boring and slow. It's a somewhat interesting story about life in a very small west Texas town. 4 graduating Seniors, over half the senior class, are coming to terms of whether or not they want to keep their boyhood pledge of leaving once they graduate. It's main quality is the "Human Element". Some of the writing acting and directing is done quite well but overall the movie just lacks something. If you like movies about people you will like it but it's a bit slow for the Rambo and/or Chris Tucker crowd.

The scenery is quite nice, horses, mountains, desert vistas and Oak Trees. The background characters and props are done well and not overdrawn. The cinematography is excellent and the direction is quite good if you like a minimalist approach.

I was bored one Sunday morning in August 2004 and I was surfing through the channels and I stumbled on this movie that was on one of the premium channels. I was getting more and more into it as the plot was going. My favorite character is Squirrel played by Ethan Embry. After seeing it on TV, I just had to buy it on DVD and I have showed this movie to many of my friends and they love it! It was amazing to see that the director of this movie Tim McCanlies directed Secondhand Lions. This movie shows what true friendship really is and what small town life is about. I recommend this movie to everyone and it is great for the whole family to watch.

Here's a summary of the scenes in this film: these guys sit around and talk. Then, some more people sit around and talk. Then, this guy and that guy sit around and talk. Then, this guy and this girl sit around and talk. Then... get the picture? Just when you think you can't stand to see people sitting around and talking any more, one of the boys comes home and sees his father sitting at a desk The father says, "Son, I've been wanting to talk to you. Come in and sit down." My wife and I LAUGHED OUT LOUD. The pacing is slow, the direction is amateurish and unimaginative, the dialog is so on-the-nose it's painful and the actors do the best they can with what little they were given. How do awful scripts like this get made?

I grew up in one of the towns mentioned in this film.....Midland, TX. This movie will certainly appeal to those who are from the area, like quirky laidback flicks or just enjoy a good film. This film had heart...it includes a cast of virtual unknowns at the time...Peter Facinelli(Scorpion King)...Ethan Embry(Sweet Home Alabama).....Breckin Meyer(Clueless)....There's some beautiful shots of wide open land....Some of the lingo might be outdated but it's a town of 81 people....You have to figure for it to be authentic...they people wouldn't be up on the latest lingo since they live in a town of 81 people. Don't listen to some silly critics(heck, it's their job to criticize) or someone from New Zealand.....what the heck do they know about small town USA....I recommend this flick....check it out...

Coming from a small town in West Virginia I was able to understand the plight of the 4 boys. My friends and I also made a similar pact, although ours started with going to college together and then moving to some big city and living a glamorous life. That's why this movie really struck me.

This movie is for anyone who has ever felt like there has to be more out there. It captures both the charms and pitfalls of small town life. In "Dancer" Squirrel and John both find a situation that suits them, giving them a glimmer of hope for the future, while Keller and Terrell Lee both realize that they will never be able to find the happiness they wish for in Dancer, Texas. At one point, though, both almost hit a point of acceptance that this is what their lives are to be and resolve to themselves that they must stay and make the best of it.

The theme through for this movie is that each of us must find what makes us happy, assessing what we have, what we need, what we want and how we're going to balance these. We can't always have everything we want, and sometimes to get something we have to give up something. And furthermore, we have to remember that what is right for one person may not be right for someone else, no matter how much you might wish it is.

I really enjoyed this film because it did capture everything that's great about small-town life, including bonds shared with the people around you. Even though this kind of story could take place anywhere, placing it in a small country town slowed the story down so that I could really enjoy it. The nostalgia also brought a tear to my eye:)

OK, I live in Texas, grew up here. I have been to every part of it. No place in Texas will you find the kind of lame events that transpired in this stupid film. They do not dress like GQ models in West Texas. They do not talk the way those people did. They do not have towns that neat and cardboard. I literally became sick watching this film. It is like watching one of those old time films about Texas where the actors used these outrageous Southern accents and showed every

where in big ten gallon hats. Just too stupid. By the end, I did not care who left Dancer, as long as I was one of them. This just tries to pull at the heart strings in every scene. It just gets so old, it is like Jerry MacGuire out West. The director wanting you so badly to get emotional. But you are just illl. Yuck, hated this film! Hated it!

This starts out so simply, but cuts to the heart of the American midwest, having spent my summers there as I child, I understand that mentality very well. My mother was born in a small town in New Mexico, and the people there have a wonderful, if simple charm to themselves. They are caring, yet ultimately unchanging, they can't possibly understand why anyone would want to leave a small town, very much as the townspeople in the movie were.

The four main characters in this film were portrayed wonderfully, by Breckin Meyer(Keller), Peter Facinelli(Terrel Lee), Eddie Mills (John), and the ever charming Ethan Embry(Squirrel). The friendship they had felt real, as if they had really known each other their whole lives. When their oath to leave town after their High School Graduation begins to fall apart when Terrel Lee Announces he cannot leave his family behind, each member examines his reasons for leaving the small town of Dancer. Of course, the truly bright spot in the film is the incredible performance of Ashley Johnson who you might remember from Growing Pains as the youngest member Chrissy. She plays John's little sister, she is simply heart-felt and charming in this role, amazing you with her ability to speak about difficult subjects better than some adults I know. Of course, you can't leave out Patricia Wettig as Terrel Lee's tyrannical mother, even though she only makes about three appearances in the film, she fills the screen with her presence each time.

All in all, this film is a well done venture. I recommend this film to anyone who comes from a small town, or would like to know what one is like, this is your best bet. With so many brilliant performances, and a breathtaking backdrop of Texas behind it, it is simply magnificent.