The 10 Worst Dancing Scenes In Movies

Movies have incorporated song and dance nearly since their inception. In fact, the first movie to feature synchronized dialogue was Al Jolson’s 1927 music-themed film, The Jazz Singer. Since then, hundreds of movies have featured musical numbers with plenty of dancing.

From classics like Singin’ In The Rain to Saturday Night Fever and Moulin Rouge, dance scenes have become a cinematic staple; they even pop up in flicks that aren’t necessarily considered musicals. But no one dances more feverishly than money hungry studio execs after a big-budget musical brings in bank. Even dozens of Broadway musicals have surfaced as adaptations of these movies.

But like anything in the movie industry, not every dance number is an instant hit. There have been plenty of instances where otherwise dramatic actors find themselves flopping around like fish in a desperate attempt to look like seasoned dancers. These moments can either destroy a movie's credibility or wind up as a tongue-in-cheek Youtube sensation, and sometimes both.

So with the release of the Footloose remake hitting theaters this weekend, we’re here to take a look back at the 10 Worst Dancing Scenes In Movies.

Even though Richard Gere still retains some of the charm he had in his youth, it's impossible to believe that this near-elderly white man would be able to keep up with Jennifer Lopez while doing the tango. The guy probably needs a handful of little blue pills just to get his engine running, yet thanks to Hollywood magic, he’s dancing like Fred Astaire in this scene.

We're sure that Gere's silver-haired stunt double got the biggest workout while filming this scene. But it doesn’t matter how much Gere actually filmed because the awkwardness of watching him attempt to dance is enough to sink this scene before it ever really gets going. You know a movie is going to be pretty bad when it centers around dancing, yet they can't even manage to pull that off convincingly.

Oh, A Knight’s Tale was bad. We mean really, really bad. And, of course, what did director Brian Helgeland include in the movie in order to ensure that it would never rise above the bargain bin at Best Buy? An incredibly stilted dance number.

This scene probably wouldn’t have been so bad if they weren’t dancing to David Bowie’s "Golden Years" in a movie that took place in the 14th century. Let that sink in for a moment. We’re sure that Helgeland was trying to go for something unique and “artsy” by including modern music in a period piece, but it’s just moronic.

We don’t remember the cast of Braveheart rocking out to Metallica, and Errol Flynn certainly didn’t own a copy of The Chronic in Robin Hood, so Heath Ledger and company shouldn’t know how to do a synchronized dance to classic Bowie. It also doesn’t help that the cheap costumes and unauthentic atmosphere makes A Knight’s Tale look as convincing as a high school production of The Taming Of The Shrew.

We know this scene is supposed to be awkward to watch for the actual characters in the movie, but the reality is that it’s even more awkward for the audience that spent $10 to see this atrocity. Jennifer Garner may be pretty to look at in 13 Going On 30, yet her role as a 13-year-old stuck in the body of a 30-year-old is nothing short of tired. The film itself, 97 minutes of nonsense, holds a special place in cinema hell for this dance number alone.

With all of the rhythm of an epileptic attempting to do the Macarena, Garner’s dance moves aren’t cute or quirky; they’re annoying and disrespectful to all of the great on-screen dancers that came before her, such as Dick Van Dyke and Michigan J. Frog. Thinking about it, there's very little reason for a musical number to actually happen in 13 Going On 30, unless the director thought this would wake up the large portions of the audience that had fallen asleep shortly after the opening credits.

While it was supposed to be a parody of the random dance numbers that take place in most Bollywood movies, this strange piece of satire from Clerks II didn’t quite land like Kevin Smith envisioned. There's no denying that Rosario Dawson is hot in her role as a jaded fast food manager, but this scene just crash-lands in the middle of the film with no rhyme or reason.

Simply existing to puzzle some audience members, or acting as a signal to take an extended bathroom break for others, Clerks II's moment of choreography is a prime example why dance scenes probably shouldn’t exist in 99.9% of movies ever made. Smith is no stranger to failed jokes; hell, Mallrats was a 90-minute long failed joke. But this might be one of his biggest clunkers in an otherwise decent movie.

This scene is so awkward and ill-conceived that it actually brings down the quality of the movie as a whole. Smith, who has a pretty niche audience, should realize that if you’re going to successfully parody something, pick a subject that more than 5% of your target audience is familiar with.

Julia Stiles is the physical embodiment of a white girl. She has about as much business on a dance floor as Nas does giving a lecture on string theory. So what do you do with an actress that has about as much grace as an electric football table? You put her in a movie where she plays a dancer, of course.

Whether she’s doing ballet, or dancing in a club, Stiles just comes across as clumsy throughout every frame of Save The Last Dance. If not for the miracle of video editing, not one shot from this movie would have been salvageable. In the above scene, Stiles tries her hardest to look hip, but it's hard to not inadvertently chuckle at her as she pulls out her repertoire of Carlton Banks-esque dance moves.

There are plenty of other pointless dances in the movie, but this short scene exemplifies why no one should ever cast Stiles as an urban dancer. If anything, she comes across as the fish-out-of-water who's simply trying too hard.

There isn’t just one dance number in this post-American Idol cash grab, starring the first American season's top finalists, Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson, that deserves to be on this list—the entire film is worthy. From terrible music, to cookie cutter, white people dance moves, From Justin To Kelly is enough to turn the stomachs of anyone with a little bit of rhythm and taste.

Clarkson’s career may have received minimal harm from this debacle, but Guarini has never recovered, and has since disappeared from the public. Someone should slap his picture on the side of a milk carton.

You Got Served can be pinned as the culprit behind the whole street dance movie craze. You would think that a movie responsible for creating both a sub-genre and a quote would be top-notch, but the reality is that You Got Served is a crime against both cinema and dance.

Even though the entire movie is pretty laughable, it’s the final dance battle that's the best example of the whole obnoxious concept. Incredibly melodramatic, this final dance fight is nothing more than an overly-choreographed spectacle that provides no more entertainment than the foul-smelling street dancers you find in any NYC subway station.

We're glad that You Got Served is one of the only movies misguided enough to have the main characters solve their feuds by dancing. Imagine if Clint Eastwood decided to drop his guns and simply do the charlseton every time he had beef with someone? We shudder at the thought.

No one is ever going to mistake Kickboxer for Citizen Kane, but the movie did itself no favors by including an utterly bizarre dance scene featuring "The Muscles from Brussels" himself, Jean-Claude Van Damme. Whenever your movie stars a near-robotic martial artist the size of a doorframe with little acting experience, it’s probably not the best idea to toss him into the middle of a scene that involves grace, rhythm, and personality.

The result was a sequence that'd make ballet instructors everywhere vomit into their tights. But for the rest of us, it elicits a mixture of disgust and joy. It’s awful, no doubt about it, but it’s impossible not to smile as Van Damme boogies down in his white pants and tank top.

Cheesy movies from the '80s aren’t for everybody; actually, they’re barely for anybody. But this horrid attempt at dance captures the anything-goes corniness of those movies. Much like Van Damme’s accent, this scene is infuriating to sit through at first, but you soon realize that you can laugh at it as long as he doesn’t hear you.

It really doesn’t get any worse than this. Between featuring the Green Goblin, the Sandman, and Venom all in one epic battle, Spider-Man 3 certainly looked as though no other comic book movie was going to top it. Then Sam Raimi decided to include not one but two dance scenes featuring Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire).

Apparently being under the influence of the nefarious alien symbiote doesn’t just turn you evil, it also makes you an accomplished jazz pianist with an insatiable thirst for dancing. It wasn’t just contrived and hokey, it was also incredibly random and pointless as audiences were forced to watch two extended musical sequences starring an emo-looking Peter Parker.

To this day we can’t decide if this was Raimi flipping the proverbial bird at the studio executives at Sony who forced him to feature Venom in the movie, or if the veteran director actually thought these dance scenes were actually going to ensure that the movie would be an instant classic. Either way, with the shake of his hips and a few minutes of playing the piano, the Spider-Man film franchise was destroyed. This is the first time that a studio was forced to reboot a multi-million dollar film franchise because of a simple dance number.