The original 1987 Dirty Dancing is a movie that worked against all odds. Eighties sensibility (and hairstyles and theme song) shoehorned into a Sixties nostalgia piece, a miniscule budget, a cast of unknowns, and a troubled production – not to mention a heroine named … Baby. And yet it positively crackled, thanks to Eleanor Bergstein's deeply personal script, crazy chemistry between leads Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, and the ethereal gyrations of the late, great Swayze.

So how do you re-create that magic? The short answer is: You don't. The long, much...