6) Old Time Rock and Roll – Risky Business
How are stars born? Or, more importantly, what is the best way to introduce a major star to an audience that will charm and arrest them to the point of awe? Well, when you have Tom Cruise in your movie, you make sure he is brimming his pearly white teeth and having a ball. Few moments in Cruise’s filmography have had quite the same impression as his pants-less dancing and air guttering to Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock and Roll in Risky Business.
As horny, privileged teen Joel Goodson, who is nothing like his surname, Cruise is alone at home when his parents leave for the weekend. After a dinner of Coke and whiskey, he slides down the floor in his underwear and pink dress shirt and does a swaggering dance to the rock tune. While Old Time Rock and Roll feels like a strange choice of song for an invigorated teen to get their socks off to – as the title alludes, it is a nostalgia trip that perhaps Joel’s parents would enjoy – that is part of the endearing quality of the scene. Cruise is a new star putting a twist on an oldies favorite.
Often parodied but rarely bettered, this show-stopping minute of lip-synching and butt shaking hinted at some of the giddy, naughty pleasures that Risky Business would soon show us. Although the film would go down a darker route than expected, it was very hard for moviegoers to get the sight of Tom Cruise dancing playfully out of their heads. Cruise’s strutting, confident and alluring, not only catered to audiences who could remember fooling around when they were home alone. It helped to catapult an everyman to fame, stardom and unfathomable riches. In other words, it is hard to imagine Tom Cruise at the same heights without the help of a crooning Bob Seger.