Footloose is a seriously confused movie that tries to do three things, and does all of them badly. It wants to tell the story of a conflict in a town, it wants to introduce some flashy teenage characters, and part of the time it wants to be a music video. It's possible that no movie with this many agendas can be good; maybe somebody should have decided, early on, exactly what the movie was supposed to be about.

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

Footloose turns out to be a sort of Boy Scout version of “Flashdance,” a carefully toned-down, overly respectable piece of schmaltz.

Kathleen Carroll

New York Daily News

Christopher Penn very nearly steals the movie as Ren's hayseed friend, and the two share a musical scene (to Deniece Williams's ''Let's Hear It for the Boy'') that's almost as sensational as the opening credits.

Janet Maslin

The New York Times