Saturday Night Fever
Grade: C+
Cast: John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney
Rated R for strong sexuality and language, drug content and some violence


Let’s analyze dancing. I have no idea where to start. Dancing is synchronized movement to music, sometimes highlighting the fashions, feelings, colors, styles, people of the era the dancing takes place in. That’s why dancing movies generally don’t work. Dancing is so secluded to its selected time period that if I recorded myself dancing in my bedroom tonight, give it less than a year and it will be embarrassing and dated. Even out of the situation dancing can be laughable to some people. And that’s one of the kisses of death planted on the cheek of "Saturday Night Fever," a pop culture milestone from 1977 that was probably a lot better in 1977 about a Brooklyn young adult who has a shitty job, spends his salary dancing on the weekend, and has no future to speak of---as far as he knows, this routine will go on for the rest of his life.

"Saturday Night Fever" is never really a bad film and is always engaging enough, but it doesn’t ultimately click as a film because it’s so two-faced. Take three scenes for example. The opening shot has John Travolta’s shoes (to unleash my inner trivia geek I will reveal that those are not his feet), and the camera pans up to him walking down the sidewalk suavely while the geeky but fantastically cool BeeGees disco hit “Stayin’ Alive” blares on the soundtrack. This scene has an unforced cool vibe that sets a tone for the film it never quite follows up on. Then, late in the film, a major character is killed in a major way that I will not reveal. This is touching and sad---delivered surprisingly and emotionally, it seems strange being so well-made in a film like this (although we have previously seen hints of its potential early on, in scenes involving Travolta’s brother who is dropping out of the priesthood). The very last scene has a romantic reconciliation between the deservedly Oscar-nominated John Travolta and the disgustingly awful Karen Lynn Gorney. What is the film supposed to be?

I like the second scene I listed the best as a mood for the film, and the last scene the least. But it’s indecisive, consistently alternating between true emotion and superficial dancing drama. There are scenes of familial trouble, and Travolta is excellent in these scenes; these are the parts of the film that really reach out and touch us, promising something other than what it can deliver. But then we get scenes with Travolta upset about getting an award he didn’t deserve, and scenes where he and his friends get revenge on another friend’s assaulters, only to find out that they may have been the wrong people. Are these scenes meant to be played straight? It’s hard to tell, because the directing is incompetent and the script indecisive. John Travolta gives his best performance here (excluding, perhaps, his Vincent Vega in "Pulp Fiction") and truly shines in the scenes where he is allowed to shine, but the film as a whole is less than its individual scenes hint at. Its potential is completely thrown out because of a terrible performance by Gorney, an extremely dated concept, and a script that can’t decide what it wants to be.

Well, not completely. As I have said, it contains some great dramatic sequences, and perhaps the second most notable thing is something I haven’t criticized yet: the choreography. The scenes on the dance floor would be electrifying if they weren’t the lunchmeat to the film’s emotionally satisfying and even more electrifying bread (to complete my sandwich analogy).

For some reason, the best example that comes to mind is a “what if” on "Ocean’s 11" (2001). While planning the heist, George Clooney says, “You’re either in or you’re out. Right now” (at least he did in the trailer; it’s been several months since I saw the film, and I can’t remember if that line was in the final cut). Well, how aggravated would Clooney be if someone said they weren’t in, yet showed up to several planning meetings, didn’t help with the heist, and then asked for a share of the dough? "Saturday Night Fever" gives us the emotional equivalent of that.


-Alex, June 2002