Village People - Can't Stop the Music
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Movie Reviews of Village People - Can't Stop the Music
Movie Review: no one can!
Summary: 5 Stars
this movie is absolutely amazing! my sister and i first watched this when i was in high school and i immediately fell in love with the village people. of course, we knew about the village people's music before then, but once you see them in action, you just can't help but love them even more!
incredibly cheesy, yet endearing. this movie has probably my favorite music video (in the form of a commercial) ever - "milkshake". it also has so many lines that you just can't help repeating ("i didn't invent it, i'm just in it!" "leathermen don't get nervous, leathermen don't get nervous!", etc). it is a classic that must be seen by cheesy movie fans, disco fans, steve guttenburg fans, valerie, perrine fans, bruce jenner fans, and pretty much everyone else on earth!
Movie Review: Monumental Fiasco Offers "Two Snowballs and a Ding Dong"
Summary: 2 Stars
There was a strange, off-kilter period of cinematic eclipse from 1979-80 which saw the successive releases of four pictures that rank among the campiest in the history of film, all reflecting some connection to the then-popular roller skating craze - 1979's Skatetown, U.S.A. and Roller Boogie, 1980's Xanadu and this travesty. The latter two were expensive major studio productions, but this one has the distinction of the megalomania of producer Allan Carr, who later torpedoed his career by producing one of the worst Oscar ceremonies with Rob Lowe and Snow White rocking out in their infamous duet of "Proud Mary". This is the base level of misguided sensibilities that runs rampant in this 1980 musical fiasco co-written by Carr and Bronte Woodard (who teamed far more fruitfully on 1978's Grease) and directed by Rhoda Morgenstern's mother, actress Nancy Walker, a former musical performer decades earlier. None of these qualifications matter much because the final product is just a mess with a musical soundtrack decidedly inferior to Xanadu.
Apparently inspired by na?ve but exuberant pre-WWII-era Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musicals such as 1939's Babes in Arms, the inane plot concerns Jack Morrell, an aspiring pop composer waiting to be discovered when he lands a gig as the house DJ at a Manhattan hotspot. He also house sits for Samantha Simpson, a former superstar model, who tries to get Jack a record deal through her various contacts in the music business. But Jack first needs to record a demo, so he and Samantha recruit a motley group of male singers in costumes presumably reflecting some kind of vocational guidance, and the Village People is formed. The group struggles through a recording session after which Samantha decides to have them perform with her in a milk commercial. The sponsors disapprove of the final product, so they all go to the gay nirvana of San Francisco where the group becomes an audience hit performing the thudding title tune at a charity fundraiser. Believe it or not, that's the story, but it only serves as an excuse to connect the elaborate and rather surreal musical numbers.
I'm not sure what possessed Walker to direct this movie or what she exactly did other than move out of the way since the story is so disjointed and the editing quite sloppy. Not only do we have the non-performances of the Village People, but we have a young Steve Guttenberg acting suspiciously hyper-kinetic as Jack and Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner wooden in an inconsequential role as uptight lawyer Ron White, who falls for Samantha. Frankly looking too mature to be a just-retired model, Valerie Perrine is the only one that seems relaxed onscreen as Samantha. Other odd casting choices include Gypsy Rose Lee's little sister June Havoc as Jack's contract-negotiating mother, Broadway luminary Tammy Grimes as a tyrannical talent agency head, and Barbara Rush as Ron's socialite mother. They all join in on the final production number for no rational reason, but then again, there is no common sense found here. Just take a look at the infamous "Y.M.C.A." number, the silliest gay-oriented musical montage since Jane Russell cavorted with an army of asexual, half-naked athletes in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It's all silly stuff and just not enough fun to make this a true camp classic.
Movie Review: can't stop the music
Summary: 1 Stars
I was dissappointed as this dvd was not compatable with Australian frequency and we could not view it on our DVD. It doesn't even come under 1 star as it could not be viewedMovie Review: Step aside XANADU...move over GLITTER....Because YOU CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC!
Summary: 5 Stars
Steve Guttenberg plays a composer who decides that if he can't make it in show biz, it's "back to dental school" (which is, in real life, where Guttenberg came from). Valerie Perrine, portraying "the Garbo of models," offers to wander around Manhattan to round up singers who can do justice to Guttenberg's songs, and starts her search by "going for a Baskin-Robbins rush" --- thus blaming sugar for her selection of the Village People as this movie's stars of tomorrow (the only other guilty party besides sugar might be producer Allan Carr).
This late '70s disco group made up of chorus boy types had only one gimmick: They decked themselves out in fantasy "macho" regalia --- one as a cop, another as a cowboy, plus a construction worker, a G.I., a leather-wrapped bad boy, and yes, an Indian. Model agency magnate Tammy Grimes puts it succinctly when she growls, "There's really no accounting for taste."
With a basso profundo voice that makes her sound like a drag queen, Grimes acts like one when she eyes Bruce Jenner: "Fruit-of-the-Loom is doing a big ad campaign, and something tells me you could really fit into a pair of jockey shorts." (He's soon stripped to his boxers, with both Perrine and Guttenberg on their knees in front of him --- you don't want to know why.)
How lads look in and out of their underwear is the movie's recurring motif, an obsession that swells to epic proportions in the production number "Y.M.C.A.": The Village People prance around a health club singing as male wrestlers pin each other to the mat in geometric patterns (like chorines in a Busby Berkeley musical), Speedo-clad boy bathing beauties dive into a pool (like chorines in an Esther Williams musical), and naked dudes lather up one another in the shower (like nothing you've ever seen before).
Answering the question "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Gypsy Rose Lee's kid sis, June Havoc, turns up to observe that the Village People are "just like Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall" (actually, they're just like Garland's audience) and to tell her son, Guttenberg, "It's your music that's bringing all these boys together --- they ought to get down on their knees!" Such double entendres run in the family, for when Perrine needs courage, Guttenberg assures her that "anybody who could swallow two Sno-Balls and a Ding-DOng shouldn't have any trouble with pride!"
It's Perrine who gets the most telling line of all: "This is the '80s! You're going to see a lot of things you've never seen before." Well, yes, but little did she realize that she, Jenner, the Village People, and Allan Carr musicals weren't going to be among them. Nobody saw this movie, which might have been more aptly titled "Can't Stand the Music."
Directed by Nancy Walker (any guesses why she never directed another feature?). Too bad --- A howl from start to finish, Just think what she could've done for all those "talented" Boy bands of the 90s.
Movie Review: Pure Camp
Summary: 3 Stars
"Can't Stop the Music"
Pure Camp
Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride
"Can't Stop the Music" is a pseudo-autobiography of The Village People. Jack Morell is a struggling composer who is desperate for fame. What he really needs is someone to sing them. Samantha, his roommate and Ron, a lawyer help him to form a group of six guys from Greenwich Village and the movie captures their rise to fame.
This is not a movie to be taken seriously by any means. There is not much plot, much characterization--not much of anything but the music of The Village People. You don't have to think or wonder or worry, you just have to sit back and have a good time. When the move came out in 1980 it was not considered as campy as it is today. The whole thing is silly but not offensive in any way.
In this film everyone smiles all of the time. I wonder if they were smiling because either they had nothing to say or that they realized what they had to say was so mundane. The movie is funny for many different reasons but not because it was meant to be so.
I have read reviews condemning the film and to those people I say, "Ease Up". This movie doesn't have a thing to say but to take us away from the rough side of life and given us an hour and a half of pure fun. So what if it doesn't have a message--it doesn't need to.