Stayin' Alive or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love The Disco Ball"

Rating: Null/10 (2 April 2009)

"Saturday Night Fever" is easily the best 70's-era New York Italian disco film ever made... but I kid Tony Manero.
If you can get past the subcategories there's plenty of Truth to be found here, and John Travolta turns in the best performance of his career as dead-end dance king & leader of the pack. Fighting Italian-Catholic guilt and every socio-economic curse known to man he aspires to make the leap from Brooklyn to Manhattan, where he has a shot at success.
Or does he? Director John Badham portrays his lead character as Doomed from Frame One, which makes the escape of the disco sequences all the more intoxicating. This movie was lightning in a bottle: a disco film made at the height of the disco craze decrying the disco culture while supplying disco's greatest hits via the Bee-Gee's based soundtrack. And the music adds a LOT to the movie... the breathy introspection of "How Deep Is Your Love" makes the subway sequence heartbreaking as "More Than A Woman" represents Tony falling in love with his dancing partner and the life she represents... and let's not forget the grooving swagger of a little song called "Stayin' Alive" which opens the movie.
Some characters in the film haven't aged well, like the uber-skank Annette (vital organs eventually break) and Troubled Nutso Bobby C. ("She likes the taste of Communion wafers.") And to mistake these characters with real-life Italians/Brooklynites would be a crime. But "Saturday Night Fever" stands as a lasting- if flawed- snapshot of a particular time, place and culture... and is definitely worth a look.
GRADE: B-