Redefines Disco After All These Years
By Yahoo! Shopping User Nov 30, 2003
Pros: Great Picture and Sound, Bonus Sounds to Some Songs,
Cons: Deleted Scenes Weren't Necessary
"Saturday Night Fever" has everything going for this legendary classic and it still holds up for 25 years, even more. It is part screwball comedy, part social drama, and lots of great dancing and music. John Travolta was the perfect choic...e as Tony Manero, the working classman who finds solace as the Disco King of Brooklyn's 2001 Odyssey. That was a real-life disco in the Bay Ridge area and today, it is called Spectrum. Tony Manero has problems underneath his surface as the hottest dancer in the nightclub. He is a lowly paint store clerk. His parents nag him all the time and wish he would get a real life. He has delinquent friends who drive crazy around town, have sex in backseats of cars with strange women, do drugs, curse all the time (so does Tony), and dangle dangerously off the Verazzanno Bridge to impress Tony's original bimbette dance partner Annette (played by Donna Pescow, later of "Angie" fame). But Tony's luck begins to change when he spots Stephanie Mangano (Karen Lynn Gorney, nine years Travolta's senior) at the nightclub, a petite, pretty disco dancer with a serious manner. When they meet at a local dance studio and then discuss everything at lunch one day, Stephanie gets the impression that Tony is too young, not educated enough, and is a "I'll do whatever I damn please" man. After all, Stephanie is an upper crust lady who works as a secretary in Manhattan where she lunches with the rich and famous, and wants to move from Brooklyn to Manhattan to make a life for herself. Once Tony ditches Annette for Stephanie for his dance partner, Stephanie, unlike Annette, would rather dance with him and keep the relationship platonic. At the end of the film, Tony finally grows up under the influence of Stephanie and first abandons the disco scene, then Annette and his dumb friends at the Verazzanno bridge, where one accidentally falls off there. This is a classic film. The dance scenes are always exciting to watch. The flaws are basically the excessive foul language done for realism, as Brooklyn working class people often speak, the fist fight scene in a sleazy bar where the guys crash their car into and Tony leaves with a bloody face, and the bridge scenes. Yes, a story had to be there or it would just be a mindless dance film, but without the excesses, the movie would be near perfect.perfect. Comic relief comes from cameos by pudgy Denny Dillon who appeared later on "Saturday Night Live" in the ill-fated 1980-81 season) as an admirer of Tony who gets dumped by him on the dance floor (on a TV version, they get to dance to "Disco Duck," where he does a mechanical-man dance) and by Fran Drescher who grabs Tony by the rear end onto the dance floor, and dances with him before his noteworthy solo dance scene. As for the extras on the DVD, the deleted scenes weren't memorable, but the VH1 special was pretty good, talking with cast members and "Dance Fever" host Denny Terrio, who trained Travolta for all the right moves. Poignancy comes from the deaths of two key members of Travolta's life - Diana Hyland, Travolta's girlfriend who convinced him to make the movie, and she would die of breast cancer in his arms; and the late, great film critic Gene Siskel, who claimed "Saturday Night Fever" to be his all-time favorite film and bought the famed white polyester disco suit at an auction. In fact, Travolta and Siskel were friends. This is a good-time DVD. And also, listen carefully for additional orchestrated sounds in the Bee Gees' "More than a Woman" and "Staying Alive" numbers. It may not be the best DVD of all time, but the picture, sound, and the VH1 special keep it afloat. Read more Less
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