Village People - Can't Stop the Music
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Movie Reviews of Village People - Can't Stop the Music
Movie Review: Fond memories of a golden era
Summary: 4 Stars
What do you remember about the 1970s? The end of the Vietnam War and the TV footage of the evacuation from Saigon? The Watergate Affair and the resignation of Richard Nixon? The Energy Crisis and the Arab oil embargo? Or do you remember hot sweaty nights on the disco floor and waking up with a different person each morning? For many of us it is the latter. The late 1970s were like a huge party which should have lasted forever. As we all know it didn't, brought to a shuddering halt by Reaganism and AIDS. Can't Stop the Music came out at the tail end of the disco craze and ushered in the 1980s - a campy, over-the-top monument to a golden era. The centerpiece of the film is undoubtedly the YMCA segment, a huge production number featuring attractive young men in the gym, wrestling, working out and performing acrobatics in the pool - a remarkable Busby Berkeley style masterpiece featuring flashes of full-frontal nudity and which was replayed over and over on prime time television in Australia. That was largely the reason why the film was a huge hit in Australia while it bombed spectacularly everywhere else. Most of the other production numbers are entertaining as well - Magic Night, Samantha, David Hodo's solo number I Love You To Death, The Ritchie Family's performance of Give Me A Break, Listen to the Sound of the City (played over the opening titles) and the title track which provides the climax and ends the film. The only poor segment is The Milk Shake featuring kids dressed as the Village People and a boring, almost tuneless song. Believe it or not this was actually used as a legitimate ad for milk on US and Canadian television. The plot of the film is weak, almost non-existent and provides a fictionalised account of the Village People story. The acting is terrible and is merely a method to link the production numbers. There are no (...) references and the film has a sanitised look about it apart from the YMCA segment. Some of the actors are good, others not so good. Olympic gold medallist and all-round hunk Bruce Jenner playing a straight accountant, the buxom Valerie Perrine playing the object d'esire, a young Steve Guttenberg (the only person to emerge from the film unscathed) who went on to have a successful film and TV career, and a rather seedy character who, it is implied, has a coke problem. The Village People themselves were dropped by their record company shortly after the film and moved to RCA where they attempted to change their image in line with the 'new romantic' craze. The album Renaissance was released and bombed badly, costing them their international following. Realising their mistake they told the media that the album was only intended to be a one-off experiment. But it was too late. The group retired to the cabaret circuit and played dinner dates at Hilton Hotels around the world. A word of warning about this DVD - it is in extreme wide screen and much of the action happens on the edge of the picture so zooming in to avoid the thick black bars on the top and bottom is not recommended. It is best viewed on a large plasma TV in a home theatre. The digital transfer is good and is worth buying for the 1970s look more than anything else - Bruce Jenner in a t-shirt cutoff showing his hairy torso must be seen to be believed. Every generation has its classic films - one generation had Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Another generation had Star Wars. The disco generation has Can't Stop the Music. It remains an irresistable snapshot and a faithful testament to a golden era which we all hoped would last forever. Movie Review: Nostalgia
Summary: 4 Stars
Had this on tape years ago - sure beats some of the shows out there on TV.
Just plain fun and a true history of the Village People who have always been different and diverse from all the others. Disco was an interesting craze and this should be saved as archival information. Especially the first song about New York City-super.
Movie Review: Campy bit of disco fluff
Summary: 3 Stars
This campy bit of disco fluff is widely considered to be the milkshake-lubed slippery slope that guided the Village People's 15.5 minutes of bizarro-world fame to a less-than-dignified crash landing. In the lead role is a miraculously flame-retardant Steve Guttenberg, whose film career survived this Discossault against all logic. The acting career of Bruce Jenner, whose ill-advised sashay through the village in shorty-shorts and a half-shirt will forever live in infamy? Not so much. Hindsight, as poor Bruce no-doubt laments to this day, is indeed a beyotch.
What is perhaps most remarkable about this film (aside from the blizzard of blow that had to have been trucked in for the shoot) is that first-and-last-time director Nancy Walker - yes, THAT Nancy Walker - manages to create what is arguably the gayest film ever made, without ever actually broaching the subject. Indeed, the mind-bogglingly homoerotic YMCA sequence alone has the power to elevate the legendary Walker to the loftiest of honorary homo heights. The sequence, which features all of the can't-even-act-it-away group trying to play it straight in a hot tub with a topless Valerie Perrine, is so queer that if one were to come across a crystalled pink leprechaun face down in a rainbow sling at a Montreal bathhouse, snorting poppers and greased halfway up his back in liquified Crisco, you *might* be in the neighborhood.
Rent, don't buy this DVD, and play with care around small animals, impressionable children, and bi-curious clergy. You can't say you weren't warned.
Movie Review: "That's Where We Live! That's Where We're From!"
Summary: 3 Stars
I can't say I'm a big fan of the Village People. I like a few of their singles, but that's about it. Still, I found their "Can't Stop the Music" film, a cheesy, campy musical of sorts to be all right.
Steve Gutenberg plays an aspiring musician in New York, at the beginning of the 1980s. It's time for a fresh new sound on the radio to go with the fresh new decade, he's sure it's time! He's sure he's got that fresh new sound too, in his home studio. Shame he can't sing. His ex-supermodel roomate suggests he gets some singers from the community. There's that guy dressed as an Indian whose a good friend of theirs, for instance, and there's bound to be (and is) others like him with just as much talent. When they all get to their apartment, they can all make a night of it to. And so (according to the plot of the film) the Village People are born, the rest of the film shows their rise to fame, eventually hitting it big in San Francisco. Expect lots of musical numbers, including a couple of big hits like "YMCA".
Now I'm a bit of a fan of tacky and campy, and that's what made some scenes appealing, but other parts of this film was a bit tacky and campy even for me (the whole "milkshake" commercial thing, for instance). Plus, the plot is pretty silly, as you might have noticed. I did like the look of the film though, which is more the style of the time more than anything deliberate. They sure don't make (or can't get away with making) films like this anymore. The music was so so, I was expecting a few more hits, but never mind.
It's no "Hard Day's Night" in terms of a music film, and not quite "Xanadu" in terms of a camp classic, but it's still worth a look if you're at all interested in either of those styles.
Movie Review: village people can't stop the music
Summary: 3 Stars
movie was ok if you like the begin years of the eighties. Very clear it's about a gay group. average humor. I would rate the movie higher if there was more of the village people music in the movie.