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Village People - Can't Stop the Music

Village People - Can't Stop the Music

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: it's music content was good & story had good text
Review: I beleive the story told how an off chance ad could evoke such a good group of guys to have such a powerful impact on society and still does Their music will live on.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Village People's Music isn't Bad
Review: I actually enjoyed the movie. The plot isn't particularly good. But if You like Village People's music You'll like this and the cast is good. Parine, Jenner and Guttenberg are good together. And it's got some good humor too...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: For gods sake stop the music!!
Review: After having produced "Grease" and making a bazillion dollars, Allan Carr decided that his next project would have some REAL talent in it: the Village People! The result is this musical plane-crash, that managed to end not only the career every performer involved, but an entire genre. Yep, this movie singlehandedly put the nail in the coffin for the movie musical. A hugely entertaining (not in the way the filmakers intended, though), and just busting to come out of the closet look at the 70's disco craze played at fever pitch by all involved. Both Steve Guttenberg and Valerie Perrine screech all of their dialogue while bugging their eyes out (If it were not for the fact that they spend the whole time grinning like idiots, they would play exactly like Vera Miles discovering Mrs. Bates in the cellar). Bruce Jenner is very well cast as a cigar store Indian (think wooden). Director Nancy Walker shows the directorial flair of a less experienced Ed Wood, Jr., and the Village People, are, well, the Village People. It's the production numbers that really make this cheese-fest worth the price, though, including but not limited to, the eye-popping YMCA scene (think Esther Williams played by Colt Models), the Construction worker fantasy (think whatever you like), to the final looooooooooong version of the title song. Everyone involved must have been on serious 80's style drugs. Too bad they coudn't have pumped some into the ventilation system at the theater.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Final Nail in Disco's Coffin, as Well as a Few Careers
Review: It was 1980. There was no MTV, Jimmy Carter was president, the Iran hostage crisis was continuing, Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign was gaining momentum and personal computers were slowly gaining in popularity. Popular films included "Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back", "Raging Bull", "The Shining" and "The Elephant Man". It was also the time when the music genre known as "disco", that had become extremely popular in the 1970's, was starting to lose luster as radio stations dropped their disco formats and disco clubs earned decreasing revenue. One disco-based film, "Saturday Night Fever", had been rather successful at the box office in 1977. This was followed in 1978 by the far less memorable film "Thank God It's Friday". Still trying to cash-in on disco's weakening popularity, two disco-based films were released in 1980: "Xanadu" and "Can't Stop The Music". Each of these films were produced on a budget of approximately $20-million, but whereas "Xanadu" earned about $23-million in theaters, "Can't Stop the Music" earned a measly $2-million. Why, you may ask? Simple: both films were bad, but "Can't Stop the Music" went farther--it was truly awful!

Imagine, if you a will, the charming & heart-warming story (note: I'm being sarcastic) of an unknown music composer, Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg), trying to find a musical group to perform his songs. His female roommate, Samantha Simpson (Valerie Perrine), and an attorney, Ron White (Bruce Jenner), gather together a group of six men from Greenwich Village and voilĂ : the very popular disco group known as the Village People was born! (Yeah, right!) Based very loosely on Jacques Morali, the man who actually founded the Village People, the film's farcical & unrealistic "rags-to-riches" story about the Village People includes performances of the songs "Y.M.C.A." (where else: in a gym), "Can't Stop the Music" (the song) and "Milkshake" (a truly frightening choreographed dance routine with the Village People all wearing white) to name a few.

Needless to say, "Can't Stop the Music" did exactly that: it hastened the end of the already terminally-ill disco genre, and wasn't particularly helpful to the careers of the Village People themselves. If you are planning to watch this little gem, I would highly recommend renting it instead of buying it since my overall rating for the film is only 1 star for its dismal acting, poor direction (Nancy Walker, 1922-1992), awful script and less than memorable choreography. Not surprisingly, Nancy Walker never directed anything else after "Can't Stop the Music", and the same can be said for the film's two writers, Allan Carr (1937-1999) and Bronte Woodard (1940-1980). Surprisingly, both had previously worked on the highly successful 1978 musical "Grease". (Of course, Bronte Woodard died shortly after "Can't Stop the Music" opened in theaters, but I won't speculate as to whether there had been a connection between the two events.) This film would make an excellent gag gift.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: IT'S SO BAD IT'S... BAD.
Review: The producers of this megaflop have been trying to recoup their losses ever since, by periodically repackaging it and trying to promote it as a "camp classic". Perhaps there are people who actually believe that it is one because of this.

Village People themselves have some claim to being genuinely camp. They were the creation of gay producer Jacques Morali, who hoped to capitalize on the fad for macho costumes and attitudes among urban gay men in the late 1970's. However, the group's initial releases proved to be so popular among straight audiences that he decided to play down (in fact, essentially conceal) the group's gay origins. I was coming out at about that time, and spent months wondering to myself... were they or weren't they? (Several of the group's original members were; a couple, including lead singer Victor Willis, definitely weren't.)

The movie, though set partly in Greenwich Village, basically ignored the gay aspect of the group as well, except in that coy production number YMCA. (Even in that number, Valerie Perrine is shown enthusiastically bouncing around the gym as if to reassure the heterosexual viewer that all these athletic young men are displaying themselves just for her sake.)

Take out the musical numbers (which are not exactly Rodgers & Hammerstein to begin with) and you're left with an embarrassingly unfunny sitcom (directly by sitcom veteran Nancy Walker) about a young songwriter (Steve Gutenberg) whose best friend, a popular fashion model (Perrine), uses her connections to get him a recording contract with his new group (Village People) she's helped him create. Bruce Jenner is awkwardly inserted into the plot as a love interest for Perrine, because apparently the songwriter isn't interested in her that way. (We are left to guess why that might be.)

Anyone with an interest in gay and lesbian cinema should see this movie, however, as a history lesson demonstrating to what lengths the entertainment industry was willing to go to deny any positive gay visibility. A decade after Stonewall, here's a gay-produced movie about a gay-themed group with gay members created by a gay man set in gay Greenwich Village... and not one overt reference to the subject of homosexuality anywhere.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Too Cool
Review: I love this piece of badly acted trash! Felippe Rose (the indian) goes to my gym and lives nearby. He's a lovely guy, tho he got a little irked when i asked if anyone got into Bruce Jenners pants during the filming..... "We were too busy WORKING!!" Well hard work pays off, and the payoff here was a cheezy camp classic!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I appeared in this movie, and I think it's great!
Review: .
OK, so I wasn't exactly a "star" in this epic, but I was in the final scene, filmed in San Francisco. It was a HUGE disco-bash filmed at The Galleria, and I was on one of the balconies hanging over the dancers below. We all kind of wondered what the heck was happening; what they were filming. No one was really sure at the time. (And NO ONE could figure out what Gypsy Rose lee's little sister "Baby June" (June Havoc) was doing at a gay dance bash... sing OUT, Louise!)

When the film came out (inside joke here, as the gay aspect of the movie was closeted within the context of the film itself), I went to the San Francisco premiere. The film continued to play for about a week before fading into oblivion. It was a HUGE BOMB!

I always thought the best part of this film (besides the over-the-top production numbers) was Bruce Jenner's fabulously sexy belly in the scene where he wears a half-shirt and cut-offs. However, when I saw this on DVD and kept my finger on the freeze-frame button, I was amazed to see more than I ever remember seeing in the theatre during the "YMCA" number. Hard to believe this film has a "PG" rating with what they show in the shower scene! (I thought I was at a hotdog stand!)

A few years after this film bombed in theatres world-wide, I remember meeting Bruce Jenner in San Francisco and telling him that I thought his belly in that scene was the best part of the film. He said that if that was the best part of the movie, he now understood why he and most of the other actors in that film never made another film!

Well, since this film effectively killed the careers of everyone who appeared in it (except for Steve Guttenberg), his words proved true.

Anyway, it's a fun movie to watch, just don't take it seriously. It's just a big disco joke. Enjoy it for what it's worth. This ain't "Gone With The Wind", it's a different kind of epic!

Oh, I remember disco, and the glory of the BOOM BOOM BOOM when we all saw our faces reflected in the spinning mirror globes high above the dance floor, and thinking it would never end. This movie is an effective reminder of the good times, bad taste, and sweet excess of the disco era.


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