Fall Out Boy - Dance, Dance (2005)
** (of four)
I don't know much about Fall Out Boy, aside from the fact that they share the same name as Radioactive Man's sidekick on a "Simpsons" episode. Oh, and that they think it's completely hilarious to watch white boys dance awkwardly. And it is hilarious - in real life, when white boys don't know they're dancing badly. When being intentionally arhythmic for the purposes of entertainment, particularly after Jon Heder's extended dance sequence in Napoleon Dynamite nailed that coffin shut, you are no longer funny.
That goes double for "cool" guys trying to make themselves over as geek guys for entertainment. Fall Out Boy's guitarist spends the entire video in a vintage suit, hair slicked down to his scalp, attending his high school's homecoming. (He's a twelfth year senior, apparently.) He asks out his plain-looking, big-chinned love interest by burning the word "Homecoming?" into her front yard grass, then cuts her chest while pinning on the corsage. But take off his thick Woody Allen glasses, and he's actually quite attractive and eager to dance.
Well, when you're at Homecoming and the house band is Fall Out Boy, and they're playing a song called "Dance, Dance," you have no choice but to do just that. The racially diverse crowd trades off moves, the guitarist-geek crowd surfs, and dorky doubles of each of the band members wander the crowd trying to find girlfriends. They do not succeed, although the guitarist geek - through his intentionally arhythmic dancing - does win the affections of the plain-looking, big-chinned love interest. No surprises there.
It's all very hammed up, even for MTV, but even while shaking my head at it, I have to admit the video is watchable. If just because the song is so solidly catchy. And because of the quick shot - about a minute in - where we see three rows of lonely fat girls sitting on bleacher risers in their dresses. Even when dorkhood is celebrated, big broads don't stand a chance.
I don't know much about Fall Out Boy, aside from the fact that they share the same name as Radioactive Man's sidekick on a "Simpsons" episode. Oh, and that they think it's completely hilarious to watch white boys dance awkwardly. And it is hilarious - in real life, when white boys don't know they're dancing badly. When being intentionally arhythmic for the purposes of entertainment, particularly after Jon Heder's extended dance sequence in Napoleon Dynamite nailed that coffin shut, you are no longer funny.
That goes double for "cool" guys trying to make themselves over as geek guys for entertainment. Fall Out Boy's guitarist spends the entire video in a vintage suit, hair slicked down to his scalp, attending his high school's homecoming. (He's a twelfth year senior, apparently.) He asks out his plain-looking, big-chinned love interest by burning the word "Homecoming?" into her front yard grass, then cuts her chest while pinning on the corsage. But take off his thick Woody Allen glasses, and he's actually quite attractive and eager to dance.
Well, when you're at Homecoming and the house band is Fall Out Boy, and they're playing a song called "Dance, Dance," you have no choice but to do just that. The racially diverse crowd trades off moves, the guitarist-geek crowd surfs, and dorky doubles of each of the band members wander the crowd trying to find girlfriends. They do not succeed, although the guitarist geek - through his intentionally arhythmic dancing - does win the affections of the plain-looking, big-chinned love interest. No surprises there.
It's all very hammed up, even for MTV, but even while shaking my head at it, I have to admit the video is watchable. If just because the song is so solidly catchy. And because of the quick shot - about a minute in - where we see three rows of lonely fat girls sitting on bleacher risers in their dresses. Even when dorkhood is celebrated, big broads don't stand a chance.
posted by daytime at 6:58 PM
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