The Last Days of Disco
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Movie Reviews of The Last Days of Disco
Movie Review: The velvet rope
Summary: 4 Stars
The last in Whit Stillman's famous trilogy from the 90s about young preppies in love, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is as talky as the other two, and much more engaging than the trilogy's middle entry (BARCELONA) but not quite up to the high writing standards of his first (and best) of the three, METROPOLITAN. LAST DAYS centers primarily upon two lovely Hampshire College grads now working as assistant editors in a publishing house, the insecure Alice (Chloe Sevigny) and the hilariously annoying and straightforward Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale), and their beaux and friends in Manhattan around 1980 or so. Although the privileged and exclusive disco scene allows them a social world they had not thought possible during their time in college, they have little idea their world is crumbling beneath them. The central action of the film is a DA's drug raid on the disco they most usually frequent (where their friend Des, played by Stillman favorite Chris Eigemann, works), but the real point of ther movie is watching the characters couple, uncouple, and most of all chat. (The greatest pleasure of any Whit Stillman film is always the highly amusing dialogue.) One of the characters played by Matt Keeslar makes a spirited defense of disco at the film's conclusion when it has been popularly declared over, but there is something very odd about a film ostensibly about disco where all the major characters are white and heterosexual. Only at the film's beautiful closing sequence, when Sevigny, Keeslar, a trainload of subway passengers and a waiting platform of commuters all blissfully groove to "Love Train" is the utopian promise of disco even hinted at: the rest of the time we're always on the privileged side of the velvet rope, which always contradicted what disco ideally could have been about.Movie Review: The Lady, the Tramp and the Manic Scottie Dog
Summary: 4 Stars
Alice Cooper has said that the problem with Disco was that the middle-aged got into it: If teenagers find people their parents' age in nightclubs, then they may as well stay home and watch Johnny Carson.
We learned in his film "Barcelona" that Whit Stilman is an unrepentent disco fan, and here he has made an ode to the end of the disco era. The story revolves around a group of Manhattan "yuppies" who hang out at a Studio 54-like disco (although it looks like it was shot at Webster Hall).
Chloe Sevigny plays a recent college graduate, Alice, who works for a publishing house and who is pursued by both the disco's womanizing assistant manager, played by Chris Eigemen, and a nice but mentally ill Assistant District Attorney, played by Matt Keeslar. (The ADA is fine as long as he takes his medication.) Meanwhile, Alice's conniving roommate, Charlotte, is trying to entrap a young advertising exec into marriage by getting pregnant. All the while, the disco is under investigation for tax and drug law violations.
With "The Last Days of Disco," Stilman has crafted another humorous and intellectually stimulating film about the young bourgeoisie and their search for love and, sometimes, lust.
Fans of Stilman's earlier films will be interested to see characters from both "Barcelona" and "Metropolitan" making cameos in "The Last Days of Disco."
Movie Review: Interesting Film
Summary: 4 Stars
Characters tend to be overly wordy and self-absorbed, not unlike many preppies. However (like Metropolitan) in reality conversations just don't flow the way this film portrays them. However, very entertaining perceptions come out of the mouths of these various characters.Preppies did in fact get increasingly interested in the disco movement in its later days. which I believe started downhill by summer of 1979. Of course, I had never been in, nor heard of any disco (during that era) where the volume of the music was low enough whereby one could actually carry on any normal conversation, let alone an actual intelligent conversation. Also, during that era, any club would have had some couples engaging in partner contact dancing with spins, turns, and so forth.(not unlike this "swing dancing" fad of several yrs ago) This film very strangely shows none of that.
Since this was a "private club" it may have beeen a preppies vision of an ideal club, perhaps not unlike some of classy supper/big band/dress up clubs of the 1920's - 30's era often portrayed in Hollywood movies.
Kate Beckindale actually was a very sexy character in an Ivy League self-absorbed sense. Her character is actually a quite realistic portrayal of many preppies of her time - kind of balancing sluttiness with her husband hunting.
Overall, a fun film to watch.
Movie Review: A good antidote to exploding helicopter movies
Summary: 4 Stars
If you can't stand to watch another exploding helicopter, "Disco" and the other two Whit Stillman movies are a good antidote. The characters actually say interesting things.You may want to watch "Metropolitan" before watching "The Last Days of Disco" to understand the world the characters come from. You may be a little misled by watching "Metropolitan" first, though. It's a simple, gentle story while "Barcelona" and "Disco" are sexier and set in more exotic locales.
Some reviewers didn't like these movies because the characters speak articulately in fully-formed, grammatically-correct sentences. I can see where they might mistake it for bad writing or acting. The bio commentary on the "Disco" DVD talks about the film crew being impressed by the Sevigny and Beckinsale's ability to recreate New England prep school speech - an indication that preppies really talk that way. I'm from California where we're all inarticulate, so I wouldn't know. Ultimately, I don't care - people don't break out singing in real life, either, but you wouldn't want to do away with musicals. Notice that the non-preppy characters in these movies talk like "normal" people.
Movie Review: The more things change...
Summary: 4 Stars
...the more they stay the same. Watching this movie, I was struck by the fact that no matter how quickly fashions change in the jungle-esque hubs of the capitalist world's great metropolises: clothes, clubs, music - it's all here one day but by next week its shuffled out by the next wave of whatever - the fundamental dynamics of growing out of adolescence in these places is still the same, some twenty five years on. There are still the yuppies (then it was advertising - now its consultancy or corporate law) and the idealists trying to make it in publishing yet really focusing on the golden shilling of the bestseller. Still no one is happy in their job, trying to rent a habitable apartment on a low income is still a nightmarish task, status anxiety pollutes the consciousness of young people like a cancer making contentment impossible, and relationships continue to take on the revolving door mantle in the manner they always have done.
There has probably been more progress on the plains of the Serengeti than in Manhattan in the past three decades.