Saturday Night Fever (1977)

Directed by John Badham. Starring John Travolta, Karen Lynn Gorney, Barry Miller, Donna Pescow, Val Bisoglio, Julie Bovasso, Joseph Call, Paul Pape, Martin Shakara, Sam Coppola. [R]

Talk about working for the weekend, Loverboy…check out Tony Manero (Travolta), an Italian-American Brooklynite working a dead-end job at a paint store who’s a nobody six days a week, but come Saturday night at local nightclub 2001 Odyssey, he’s a king. Norman Wexler’s script is full of clichés and familiar territory—gang fights, volatile family drama, dance competitions, dispassionate promiscuity, melodramatic tragedy, etc.—but it all comes smoothly packaged in the cheap glamour of discotheques and set to the candied dance rhythms of era-defining music. In fact, the mega-platinum soundtrack (composed primarily of tunes written by and/or performed by the Bee Gees) is arguably even better-loved than the film, helping to popularize disco music across the country, even the world. In his first feature film starring role, Travolta delivers a fine performance (and even finer dance moves), a tangled ball of confusion, doubt, and insecurity masked by bravado in the “real world,” but incapable of missing a step whenever he glides into a liquid strut on the dancefloor. Look for Fran Drescher as one of Travolta’s dance partners. Cut by seven minutes for a PG-rated re-release a couple years later; followed by a sequel in 1983 called Staying Alive.

79/100