A lot of folks consider this not only a horrendous sequel
but also just an all around bad film.
And I get it. I don’t necessarily
agree will all of that but I do get it. I
mean why the fuck do you need a sequel to Saturday
Night Fever? It was self-contained
and didn’t leave very many burning questions.
What else is there to say about this character?
Well it does seem logical that Tony (Travolta) would set his
sights on Broadway next so I’ll give credit for that. It also makes sense that he would move to
Manhattan to try and further his career, become a dance instructor and take
other odd jobs until he gets his big break and even still act like a jerk. What doesn’t add up is that Tony doesn’t
curse, drink or smoke. The first movie
was a pretty raunchy R but this one is a tame PG. And it’s really weird is that Stallone (who
writes, produces and directs here) felt like he needed to justify this new tone
and gives Tony some line about having a new outlook on life. Yeah I don’t care for the switch to PG but to
provide an explanation to the audience seems bizarre to me. It’s like Stallone broke the fourth wall for
a moment.
Anyway, Travolta looks like he’s having a good time. Tony is less moody and slightly more grown up. He cracks a lot of jokes, like a lot of jokes. And the shit he dishes out is classic
Stallone humor. In fact I think Stallone
turned Tony into himself pretty much.
The no cursing, smoking, drinking, very goofy attitude and eternal
optimism are all traits of the man. Every
piece of Tony’s dialogue I could totally picture Sly saying in another movie or
actually even more in real life.
Speaking of Stallone he does an alright job directing. Definitely not as good as Rocky II, III or, hell, even The Expendables (even though it wasn’t a
great flick). Come to think of it this
is probably the worst I’ve seen him as a director. There are four really annoying things that he
does here. The first is there are too
many montages. Sly, buddy, why the fuck
were there like twenty montages? Well
actually I can give a pretty good guess what the answer is which leads me to
the next annoyance. Ok, I know this is
going to sound really stupid but there’s too much dancing. I know you’re thinking, “this is a fucking
dancing movie, what did you expect?”
Sure this thing needs to have dancing in it but holy shit is there a lot
of it. This along with the montages
(most of which consist of people dancing) were there probably to pad out the
film. There isn’t much of a story: Tony
auditions for a Broadway production, gets in and there’s also a love triangle. In order to fill out those 90 minutes they
just made the dancing and montage scenes as long as they needed. Saturday
Night Fever had a bunch of dancing but it was to support the story and characters. Here it’s played up as the main attraction
while everything else takes a backseat.
Items three and four have to do with the two female
leads. Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes (Dirty Dancing, Flashdance)) is Tony’s…umm…well
that’s just the problem. I couldn’t tell
if she was supposed to be Tony’s girlfriend or just his friend. She says she loves him towards the end but
were we supposed to know this all along?
It’s not clear at all. And this
is important information to be fuzzy on because the love triangle doesn’t work
or have any emotional weight if she’s just a friend that doesn’t have the hots
for Tony. The other woman in the
equation, Laura (Fiona Hughes (Aspen
Extreme)), is too sinister of a bad guy.
She’s the star of the Broadway show and she wants Tony as a boy toy and
not a real boyfriend. This is fine but
Stallone made the character utterly heartless.
She’s so cold with her constant dumb smile or smirk. It’s like the part was played by a
robot. And because Laura is such an
empty shell of a person I can’t even work myself up to dislike her. She’s just there on screen and you know she’s
mean but you don’t feel one way or another about her.
The show that Tony’s in is called Satan’s Alley and the
director describes it as a journey into hell and then an ascent into heaven. The plot is supposed to follow the same idea
but it kind of doesn’t. Tony starts in
hell (not being in a Broadway show) and only rises (he gets in a Broadway show). It’s pretty much a straight line and not a
curve. There isn’t any character
development. That happened off screen in
between films when Tony gave up his vices and vulgar speech. What we’re given here is more like the ending
to a story and not a complete tale in and of itself. So the fatal flaw of the movie is that it
focuses on a part of Tony’s life that’s pretty uninteresting. If Stallone wanted this character reformed
then we should see that reform and what the cause was to bring it on. I think that would’ve been a better picture.
So sure it’s not very good and pretty shitty compared to its
predecessor but it’s certainly not unwatchable.
Entertainment Weekly called this the worst sequel ever made. Really?
I beg to differ. Rocky V is at least on par with this and
The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a
total piece of fucking crap. I would
rather see this than Blues Brothers 2000
any day. I don’t think Staying Alive is quite as terrible as
people make it out to be but it’s definitely not good or even worth seeing. It’s just averagely bad. And also it doesn’t have very much to do with
the first one except that our main character’s name is Tony. I guess it was good that they didn’t call
this Saturday Night Fever II. Check out Saturday
Night Fever I though. That one
really is a damn good film.
No comments:
Post a Comment