Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Written by CinemaSerf on September 4, 2022

I was but ten years old when this was released, so never saw it at the cinema at the time - but boy was it big news. John Travolta was fêted all around the world as the white-suited hipster "Tony Manero" who almost glided around the city streets - and the dance floor. Determined to improve his lot, he enters a disco competition which he thinks will change his life and what ensues for about two hours is his story. Sadly, it's not much of a story. He's not a very engaging fellow; treats women badly, has a mouth on him that could strip paint and is constantly at loggerheads with his hard working, decent, old man. Things take a turn for the more complicated when the apple of everyone's eye - his priest brother "Frank" (Martin Shakar) returns home announcing his intention to give up the priesthood for a life that doesn't require celibacy. Luckily, "Tony" teams up on the dance floor with the spunky "Stephanie" (Karen Lynn Gorney) - a woman even more ambitious for a clean start than him - and that is where the film eventually takes off. On the dance floor, with the disco ball working it's magic and a collection of superb Bee Gees tracks that cannot fail to get your toes tapping. "Night Fever"; "Staying Alive"; If I Can't Have You" and the more slow tempo'd "How Deep Is Your Love" make the soundtrack way, way, more memorable than this otherwise tawdry, tacky look at life in New York in the mid 1970s. Travolta is the star, his walk and his cocky style stand him apart from the rest of this rather depressingly anodyne story - but in the end it's a film about aspiration, dancing and the Bee Gees, and the latter elements are well worth watching.