(SHOULD BE) FORGOTTEN FILM: LAMBADA (1990)

“Brewski!” yells a drunken idiot, as he emerges from a pool with a six pack.

That is the opening image of 1990’s LAMBADA.

A party scene ensues all set to the song entitled “I Can’t Live Without Rock N Roll”. An odd opening to a film about Lambada.

Kevin Laird (soap opera star J. Eddie Peck) is, by day, a married high school math teacher in Beverly Hills.

By night, he is “Blade”, a leather clad, motorcycle riding Lambada dancer at the “No Man’s Land” club. After the dancing is done, he tutors the rest of the dancers in math, hoping they will get their GED.

One day, Sandy (Melora Hardin) wanders into the club and sees her math teacher dancing. She then begins to fantasize about him, often during math class. She frequents the club hoping to get to know him better. Blade isn’t interested. This storyline would be a lot creeper if not for the fact that Hardin is clearly in her twenties.

These worlds collide when it becomes known that Kevin / Blade buses the Lambada dancers to Beverly Hills, to sneak into school after hours to use the computers. Kevin is fired. But a big Math Quiz, between the dancers and those in the school, could be his chance to get his job back.

LAMBADA was one of the two big films based on the dance craze of the early 90’s. In fact, both this Cannon release and the other film, THE FORBIDDEN DANCE, opened the same weekend. LAMBADA is often considered the better of the two. That makes me wonder just how bad THE FORBIDDEN DANCE was, and why I have never seen it.

Director Joel Silberg was a house director for Cannon, directing such other fad films as BREAKIN and RAPPIN. He was also not a fan of the letter G. He wrote the film with Sheldon Renan, one of his only films. I think BREAKIN will go down as his masterpiece.

As a huge fan of THE OFFICE where she plays Jan, I honestly never noticed Melora Hardin in all of her work in the 1980’s. I mean, she was in IRON EAGLE. I watched that countless times, yet not in years. I had to have noticed her there. Here, not only was she the female lead, but she was also on the movie poster.

BREAKIN and BREAKIN 2 star Adolfo “Shabba Doo” Quninones stars as one of the dancers that Blade tutors. He also choreographed. The BREAKIN films are obviously better examples of his work, but one scene, a computer room dance sequence where old school Mac’s start creating music, is quite memorable.

LAMBADA is another film that, while watching, I thought had never been released on DVD. Turns out, it is available from MGM.

You have been warned.