ABC's <i>Dirty Dancing</i> Remake Is a Sad, Strange Production

Inside ABC’s tonally bizarro update of the seminal 1987 romantic drama are about four different projects trying to get out. There’s the most obvious one, a frame-by-frame remake of the original that’s as awkward and ill-conceived as Gus Van Sant’s 1997 carbon copy of . There’s the one Abigail Breslin’s starring in, an emotionally textured and realistic coming-of-age story about a clumsy but engaging wallflower. There’s a musical, in which Breslin and Nicole Scherzinger mime along to their own singing voices in-inspired spinoff starring Debra Messing as a lonely housewife coming to terms with the turbulent depths of her own desire.