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| Saturday Night Fever |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 118 |
| Public Rating: 9.06 (31 votes) |
Director: John Badham |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/Musical |
Year: 1977 |
| Writer(s): Norman Wexler |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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"Where do you go when the record is over..." asked the tagline for John Badham's deeply schizophrenic Saturday Night Fever. The answer, of course, is straight to your local karoake bar, where you too can sing along to "Summer Loving," which comes from Grease, the film Travolta made straight after this one. While SNF may represent everything people hate about the 70s, Grease would spawn something that was every bit as stupid in the 80s as disco was in the 70s. Lucky John Travolta: he got to be in two movies that started or encapsulated two ridiculous trends back to back. The difference is that Grease is a simple-minded, fun and energetic film that still looks good today (of course, that film was about an era 20 years past, which helped). But Saturday Night Fever is an amazingly awkward mixture of kitchen-sink drama, goofy disco scenes, dated 70s fashions and would-betragedy.
By far the best thing here is John Travolta as Tony Manero, an unambitious 19-year old working in a paint store who lives with his parents. Tony works so that he can dance on the weekends; the disco is the only place where he's considered good at anything, and he's the most popular guy their. The annual dance competition is coming up, and Tony needs a partner. Enter symbolic lady No. 1, Annette (TV and soap opera veteran Donna Pescow), local slut and fast on her way to becoming, in Tony's sensitive words, "a cunt"; the somewhat clueless girl still has a thing for Tony. Also up in the battle for Tony's soul is Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney, original cast member of "All My Children"), who aspires to be a Manhattanite.
Saturday Night Fever is clearly intended as a gritty portrait of Brooklyn working-class grime. Some moments, indeed, can't be laughed off as mere 70s kitsch, like Travolta's buddies mocking a gay couple or casually dismissing dance team as mere "Spics." Home life is supposed to be tense, what with Tony's disapproving Roman Catholic parents. The romantic triangle is conceived as nothing less as a battle between Brooklyn (BAD) and Manhattan (GOOD). Despite this blatant condemnation of those shiftless and ignorant folks who can make Brooklyn such a pain in the ass, the film grossed over $200 milllion.
Most of the film is taken up with dated dramatic moments, and though the film is sometimes amusing as intended, it far more often serves as fodder for the audience. Besides the obligatory cheers and catcalls following any dance sequence, the occasionally goofy shots clearly remind one that this is a film of the 70s. Unlike, say, Dirty Harry, SNF is of the moment but not nearly smart enough to be about the moment. Indeed, the film is full of folks who could only have found work in the 70s. Chief among them is screenwriter Norman Wexler; a look at his life and ouevre is enlightning. Besides co-writing one geniunely good film (Serpico; Al Pacino's performance there is a key reference point for Travolta's character here), he wrote a number of similarly dated films: Joe, a pre-Bronson story of vigilante justice (death to the hippies!), Mandingo and Drum, two incredibly tasteless movies about plantation life (featuring dialogue like "He might kill Blaize, or even worse...castrate him"), the SNF Stallone-directed sequel Staying Alive, and a Schwarzenneger vehicle, Raw Deal. Despite what appears to be a truly dismal record in retrospect, Wexler was highly regarded in the 70s, even if he did threaten to assassinate Nixon and act like such an asshole that Andy Kaufman based his evil alter-ego Tony Clifton in part on Wexler. Such a man, and such vapid subject matter (along with the infamous song "How Deep Is Your Love"), could only have achieved success in the 70s, and John Badham's direction neither elevates nor degrades the proceedings. Still, a mildly amusing piece of cheese featuring a nuanced and excellent portrayal from Travolta that belongs in a different film.
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