Don't judge a film by its costumes...

Rating: Null/10 (19 June 2001)

Saturday Night Fever is a terribly misunderstood film; I don't know anyone in my age group (growing up in the 70's but too young to have been part of the disco scene) that doesn't think that it's a silly film about disco dancing. But it's not.
It's not the greatest film in the world, and certainly it's dated. The dancing is important -- it's the backdrop, it's a catalyst for character development -- but it's not the focus of the film. Saturday Night Fever tells the tale of an aimless Italian-American kid (Tony Manero, ably played by a very young and very thin John Travolta) whose only escape from his unhappy life is dancing at the club on the weekends with his friends; and it walks us very objectively through events that catapult Tony from a boy who can allow himself to escape to a man who realises he has to deal with his life.
There's a little bit of everything in the film (and a lot of profanity) It deals with personal and religious disillusionment; it deals with frightening problems like teen pregnancy and the choice of whether or not to get a post-secondary education in favour of working. It's not a light-hearted movie! But I highly recommend it because it's an analogy for the process we all have to go through as teenagers -- stuck in the odd limbo where we're not quite children, not quite adults, and no one quite knows how to