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#33 - Saturday Night Fever
John Badham, 1977
Chronicles the day-to-day misadventures of 19-year-old Tony Manero (John Travolta) who works in a dead-end job by day and goes clubbing by night.
It would have been interesting to go into this film with expectations based purely on its place in pop culture and thinking it was going to be a campy song-and-dance kind of film about how awesome disco was, but no, I was well aware that it was a lot darker than its reputation suggested (if nothing else, the MA rating on the case would've tipped me off). An interesting slice of social realism rooted in a working-class Italian Catholic background made for an interesting choice, as Tony Manero only really cares about dancing because it's the one thing about his life that he actually likes. Other than him, most of the cast don't get much definition - he's got a few friends but the only one with any real characterisation is the one who's nervous about a shotgun wedding, while the rest are shallow and unsympathetic. The film has a recognisable conflict in that Tony finds himself in the midst of a love triangle between a sad, doe-eyed young woman hanging off him all the time and the worldly, challenging upper-class woman who treats him coldly at first but soon warms up to him. That's pretty standard stuff even before he joins up with the latter as part of a dance contest (even though the former asked him to do the same thing), but even that plays out like a sub-plot that doesn't feel of major significance. The various plotlines are just interesting enough to keep one's attention as the film goes through developments that are somewhat predictable now, and thinking of this film as character-driven is a shame because a lot of them aren't that good. Travolta's got some decent chops and he gets a chance to show them off here - I can definitely understand why he got nominated for a Best Actor Oscar here, though that could just as easily be because of his dance moves. Other performers vary in terms of ability or interesting characterisation, but not by much.
While the film does end up being more of a gritty drama than expected, it still finds plenty (and I do mean plenty) of time to actually show off all the dancing that Tony and his friends do night after night. At least half the value of the film is seeing Travolta and co. pull some impressive moves to some very catchy hit songs. It's not hard to see why that became the part that people celebrated and not the actual plot. The lurid cinematography also makes these sequences stand out. I'm not sure if they're good enough to guarantee the film's place as a classic but it's definitely got some quality, even though some scenes do come across as a little off-putting, such as
John Badham, 1977
Chronicles the day-to-day misadventures of 19-year-old Tony Manero (John Travolta) who works in a dead-end job by day and goes clubbing by night.
It would have been interesting to go into this film with expectations based purely on its place in pop culture and thinking it was going to be a campy song-and-dance kind of film about how awesome disco was, but no, I was well aware that it was a lot darker than its reputation suggested (if nothing else, the MA rating on the case would've tipped me off). An interesting slice of social realism rooted in a working-class Italian Catholic background made for an interesting choice, as Tony Manero only really cares about dancing because it's the one thing about his life that he actually likes. Other than him, most of the cast don't get much definition - he's got a few friends but the only one with any real characterisation is the one who's nervous about a shotgun wedding, while the rest are shallow and unsympathetic. The film has a recognisable conflict in that Tony finds himself in the midst of a love triangle between a sad, doe-eyed young woman hanging off him all the time and the worldly, challenging upper-class woman who treats him coldly at first but soon warms up to him. That's pretty standard stuff even before he joins up with the latter as part of a dance contest (even though the former asked him to do the same thing), but even that plays out like a sub-plot that doesn't feel of major significance. The various plotlines are just interesting enough to keep one's attention as the film goes through developments that are somewhat predictable now, and thinking of this film as character-driven is a shame because a lot of them aren't that good. Travolta's got some decent chops and he gets a chance to show them off here - I can definitely understand why he got nominated for a Best Actor Oscar here, though that could just as easily be because of his dance moves. Other performers vary in terms of ability or interesting characterisation, but not by much.
While the film does end up being more of a gritty drama than expected, it still finds plenty (and I do mean plenty) of time to actually show off all the dancing that Tony and his friends do night after night. At least half the value of the film is seeing Travolta and co. pull some impressive moves to some very catchy hit songs. It's not hard to see why that became the part that people celebrated and not the actual plot. The lurid cinematography also makes these sequences stand out. I'm not sure if they're good enough to guarantee the film's place as a classic but it's definitely got some quality, even though some scenes do come across as a little off-putting, such as
WARNING: "Saturday Night Fever" spoilers below
the scene where the sad-eyed woman I mentioned earlier, in an ill-advised attempt to make Tony jealous, ends up attempting to hook up with one of Tony's friends but ends up being sexually assaulted by more than one of Tony's friends for her trouble while Tony...does nothing about it? What? At least he seems to have bailed on them by the end of the film, but even so...I don't know, that bit just came out of nowhere and seemed to distract from one character's possibly-deliberate fall to his death at the end of the film happening shortly afterwards.