When I went in to see Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, I expected it to be really bad with all the bad reviews labelling it as corny and ridiculous etc. So I was surprised when it turned out to be a better film that I expected. The acting was good and the dancing was hot. And even though the plot may have been unoriginal and predictable, nothing these days is really that new.

I thought Romola Garai (as Katey Miller) did a good job of keeping up an American accent. And Diego Luna (as Javier Suarez) does a great job of dancing and being a charismatic character, not to mention that he's pretty hot!

I haven't seen the original Dirty Dancing, but I think you should let this film stand on its own. Just because it uses the name, it doesn't mean they're linked.

On the whole, if you want to see a nice movie with lots of hot dancing, Havana Nights is for you. But if you're looking for something equal to the original, you may not like this one as much.

My biggest gripe with this movie is that the Latin dancing is not very genuine. My father was living in Havana in the early 1960s, and reports what seems pretty obvious: this film is full of a modern, highly stylized and "hip-hoppified" version of Cuban street dancing.

But, there is a lot of other stuff to gripe about in this film.

Plot: our heroine is an American gringa whose family moves to pre-revolutionary Cuba because her dad's company promoted him to a position there. We don't know anything about our heroine (let's call her "La Gringa Caliente," because she eventually learns to loosen up and let strange men touch her butt),except that she gets good grades. So, she moves to Havana and becomes mesmerized by afro-Cubano dancing. This leads her to fall madly in love with a waiter in her hotel, and enter a dance tournament with him. Her family is scandalized. Then they are not scandalized any more.

The plot is totally predictable, and the acting is downright bad. The love story lacks guts. None of that matters if what you want is to see cool Latin dancing and listen to cool Latin music, which was my goal. But, even that goal is sadly disappointed here. There is some cool music, but most of the music is just hip-hop with a Latin beat. A lot of the dancing is just 2000's club freak-dancing... it looks more like Lambada than Samba.

The three features that pushed me from silent disappointment to derisive laughter were:

(1) They make a big deal about "Old Havana," and show all of these landscape shots to impress the viewer. But the city they are showing is San Juan, Puerto Rico! This might not be so obvious, but they show the most famous landmarks in San Juan, so that you cannot possibly even pretend the setting is Havana. So much for the "Havana Nights."

(2) For some God-awful reason, they throw Patrick Swayze back in! First of all, his character has no role, no background, and no reason to be there. He plays the gringo dance teacher who somehow teaches La Gringa Caliente how to loosen up and let guys touch her butt (he has a great line: "It can be very scary when someone touches that part of your body." who wrote this?). They dance around ballroom style. Second, the guy has had a really bad face-lift or something. He was only 52 when this film came out, but he looks 65. I was worried that his hairpiece was going to come flying off during some of the spins.

(3) The pathetically weak attempt to illustrate the social pressures that led to the Cuban revolution left in me stitches.

Conclusion: stink bomb. If you want a movie with cool Cuban music, rent Buena Vista Social Club. If you want to watch cool Latin dancing, rent the 1980s Robby Rosa film "Salsa!" If you have a desperate need to get rid of four dollars and be bored for 90 minutes, rent "Dirty Dancing Havana Nights."

DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS, although a sequel to the '80s classic, is actually a prequel set in 1950s Cuba. Although I'm not the ideal viewer for these kinds of films (I gravitate towards horrors and thrillers) I found this to be an enjoyable piece of film-making.

The political backdrop is eventful, and the character of Diego Luna (the actor already having come a long way from VAMPIRES: LOS MUERTOS) was sufficiently interesting to keep me watching. Romola Garai put in good work in both this and the same year's INSIDE I'M DANCING, while Patrick Swayze (RIP) inevitably steals his scenes in his extended cameo role.

Perhaps not a wonderful film, but an engaging dance-drama with a interesting historical backdrop nonetheless.