It is hard not to smile at a movie as simple as "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights." The characters are basic, their motivations
are clear, the complications are straightforward, and the resolutions are easily arrived at. It's like a children's story, but with more rhythmic pelvic thrusting. Borrowing its title and several plot elements from the cheesy 1987 cult classic, "Havana Nights" is set in Cuba in late 1958, on the very eve of revolution. Blond, wide-eyed Katey (Romola Garai) has been uprooted to Havana -- during her senior year, no less! -- because her father's job as an auto-maker bigwig requires him there. There are other American kids living at their hotel, notably James Phelps (Jonathan Jackson), an Aryan posterboy whose WASPish parents have connived with Katey's WASPish parents to make the two into an upper-class uber-couple. Katey's not interested in James, though. She sorta likes Javier (Diego Luna), the bird-faced cabana boy who spends his idle hours dancing Cuban-style in clubs with names like La Rosa Negra. Katey and Javier are an unlikely couple, from two different worlds, but they have something in common: a love for, how you say, the dance.
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