Disco movie gave Travolta his shot at fame...

Rating: 6/10 (9 October 2006)

For disco fans, "Saturday Night Fever" must be like going to heaven. It's only when JOHN TRAVOLTA, as Tony from Brooklyn, is doing his thing on the dance floor (energetic, dazzling twirls, leaps and steps lit by rosy glows of strobe lights) that it really comes alive. The story itself is rather mundane, about an arrogant boy's restless search for something to do on week-ends to get away from his everyday living in a Brooklyn tenement.
But when the Bee Gees music is in full blast and JOHN TRAVOLTA shows the Brooklyn gang what he can do on a dance floor (in that white suit), we can see the kind of immediate appeal this film had in the midst of the Disco Era. You might call it a microcosm of the '70s craze for this kind of dance music.
All of the scenes capture New York City nicely (especially those bridge scenes at night), but there's nothing deep here in exploring Tony and his restless energy while he seems to be a loser at love and finding himself. Nor are his friends anything more than cardboard cutouts of stereotypes we've all seen before, most of them with accents even stronger than Tony's and somewhat dumber, some of them yearning for jobs and a little respectability.
Summing up: Great for Travolta fans, all others beware, it may not be your kind of music--or film.