Falling in love and learning how to salsa dance is cool; doing it against the backdrop of a real, live proletariat revolution is even cooler, because you learn about class warfare and the oppression of the masses and stuff.

So it goes in “Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights,” the sequel/prequel/philosophical successor to the now-infamous camp classic “Dirty Dancing” (1987), in which a pre-rhinoplasty Jennifer Grey bumped, ground and, yes, had the time of her life with an inexplicably heterosexual Patrick Swayze.

“Havana Nights” is more of the same, albeit with a newfound geopolitical resonance. If audiences embrace it, one can only imagine what the future will bring — ‘‘Dirty Dancing: Beirut Inferno’’ or maybe ‘‘DD: Breakin' in Pyongyang.’’

Set several years before the original — in 1958, on the eve of Castro’s ouster of Batista — “Havana Nights” features two new leads but the same central conceit of a brash, blossoming young woman raging against the shackles of respectability. The girl, Katey Vendetto, isn’t thrilled when her auto executive father uproots the family during her senior year in high school and moves them to Cuba. Still, bookish, cloistered Katey finds herself strongly intoxicated by the native rhythms and smoky scent of brewing revolution.

Emboldened by her new surroundings, she befriends an impoverished but proud Cuban poolboy named Xavier (Diego Luna from “Y Tu Mama Tambien”) and secretly recruits him for a New Year’s Eve dance competition. Naturally, Katey's society-minded parents, played by Sela Ward and John Slattery (TV's “Ed”), are scandalized, especially when the love-sick girl admits that the local cuisine is to her liking.

As Katey, actress Romola Garai (“I Capture the Castle”) has the turbo-charged hips and essential air of sweetness to pull off the role, with one caveat: Her statuesque frame looks like it could crush the frail-bodied Luna like Panamanian coup. Otherwise, Luna and Garai are earnest and well-matched co-stars, despite trite wordplay (“Feel the music!”) formulated by eight — yes, count them, eight — credited screenwriters.

Ultimately, the Cuban Revolution is reduced to laughably diminutive proportions in the hands of director Guy Ferland (‘‘Telling Lies in America’’) and his octet of writers — like someone passing gas at the dinner table. Not that we're complaining. A self-serious ‘‘Dirty Dancing,’’ without that bubbling core of hot cheese, would have been insufferable.

As if to acknowledge this fact, the filmmakers throw cosmetic common sense to the wind and allow Swayze to appear in a cameo role as original dirty dancer Johnny Castle, who is five younger in this movie but looks a decade older. Swayze doesn't disappoint, preening and twirling and clenching his glutes together like a French maitre d’, always within sight of a wall-length mirror.