Okay, okay I know. This may be a worn-out subject, like talking about Studio 54. But I watched this for the first time in years yesterday. Afterward I was shocked that I don't actually own it on video. I had forgotten (duh!) how really, really good it is. I enjoyed it so much!
Many people dismiss it as just some stupid disco movie, as a joke period piece or whatever, but I found in many respects the disco sequences were peripheral to the story, which is really about a bunch of loser guidos with no future and the talented but not-so-bright anti-hero who wants to escape it. Tony (John Travolta) is basically a nobody pining away at a minimum wage job in a paint store, living at home with his parents who rag on him all the time, but at the nightclub he is a celebrity, a God, and the crowds part when he walks through. The girls all want to do him, people want to wipe off his forehead when he finishes dancing, he is the King. That whole ability of the nightclub to transform someone like that and make them a star, make them SOMEBODY, even if it's just for one night or after dark. And the timeless ritual of spending hours primping and getting your look together in order to go out with your buddies and get laid. Tony is so concerned with his look that he wears a towel over his shirt during dinner, then becomes enraged when his father hits his hair.
I thought the acting was REALLY good and I loved Donna Pescow as Annette, who can't decide if she wants to be the archetype "nice girl" or "pig", so in need of love and not sure how to handle her sexuality. The music remains GREAT. And my favorite scene is the disco sequence in which everyone at the club is dancing to "Night Fever" with the great shots of the crowd in all their finery and slick dance moves, then we fade into a long shot of Tony in bed the next morning in his undies, sleeping off the disco fever of the night before, with the club soundtrack still softly playing somewhere in the background, the sounds of the club still echoing in the brain. How many nights/mornings have I had that! We've all been there. I think the movie captured that so well. I really love it.
[This message was edited by Luxury Lex on 09-02-02 at 06:21 PM.]