Staying Alive

Seeing this film on TV again the other night made me wonder how amazing the human body is.... or more specifically John Travolta's body.

In Michael and Get Shorty he had a tremendous girth for the character's roles yet the films before and after Phenomenon and Broken arrow show a different size. and then we have the extreme end of the scale in this film. Sly Stallone trained Travolta for 3 months to get him into the rippling muscled fat free condition he displays in this film.

It just goes to show you that your fat levels aren't really THAT predetermined by birth and genetics afterall. All you have to to is be committed to attaining a the shape you want to be. Travolta can be slim, medium or large build, muscled, fat or average depending on the film role his ability in this regard is second only to Robert deNiro of raging Bull and Cape fear physique abilities.

Travolta wil never be out of work while he is able to mold himself into his characters. The charcter of Tony would not have been believeable in this film in any shape other than the one depicted by John Travolta in this film. he got it spot on --- in appearance, line delivery and overall feeling!

7/10

Continuing my plan to watch every Sly Stallone movie in order, I come to Saturday Night Fever.

Plot In A Paragraph: In this sequel to Saturday Night Fever, former disco king Tony Manero (John Travolta) has left Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan. He stays in a cheap hotel and works as a dance instructor by day and as a waiter at a dance club on a night, trying to succeed as a professional dancer on Broadway. The breakaway from his Brooklyn life, family and friends seems to have matured Tony and refined his personality, represented by his diminished accent and his avoidance of alcohol and swear words. However, certain things have not changed, as with his most recent girlfriend, who's a dancer and also the singer of a band. He feels free to pursue other women, but gets very jealous if someone looks at her too long.

Stallone has Travolta looking the heat he ever looked, the movie movies at a good pace and is entertaining enough, while not getting close to the first movie. Despite a critical mauling, this was one of the 1983 top ten most successful films at the box-office.

To date this is the only movie Sly has directed, that he didn't star in. Which I think is a shame, as he is a talented director.

Cynthia Rhodes again! The continum from Dirty Dancing, Staying Alive & Flashdance! How is this sexy beautiful dancer always the forlorn gal!?

Staying Alive (1983)

** (out of 4)

Sylvester Stallone co-wrote and directed this sequel to Saturday NIGHT FEVER, which picks up five years after that film has Tony Manero (John Travolta) trying to make it as a chorus dancer on Broadway. His old time girlfriend Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes) puts up with his trouble but rich girl and star Laura (Finola Hughes) just uses him as she wants and soon Tony's going to have to decide on his future in both dancing and female. STAYING ALIVE is clearly a very, very bad movie but I think it crosses a line that makes it so campy that you can't help but have some fun with it. I'm really not sure what Stallone was thinking with his screenplay but it seems like he wanted to add in touches of ROCKY making Tony an underdog and this here just never works for a number of reasons. For starters, Tony is a complete jerk and his character just doesn't have the same appeal as Rocky. Another problem here is that the dialogue is so incredibly bad that you can't help but laugh at it as well as the so-called character development that happens. Not for a single second can you believe anything that the Tony character is going thru and especially his "growing up" scenes towards the end. Not only that but the entire music here is just really, really bad and we get too many scenes where we hear complete music numbers that just make your ears numb. This is especially true during the scenes of the Laura character in a bar singing. More bad stuff comes from the final stage production, which is just poorly shot and the entire thing just comes across as pure camp. Even Travolta is just missing a certain energy that was so clear in the original but I think this too can be blamed on the screenplay but that rawness is just missing here. I thought both Hughes and Rhodes were good in their parts but, again, the screenplay does very little for them. Those expecting anything nearly as good as Saturday NIGHT FEVER are going to be in for a major disappointment but if you go into the film expecting unintentional laughs and camp then you should at least be somewhat entertained.

Not good, but not as bad as it is made out to be.

Plot is thin, but the behind-the-scenes look at a Broadway dance show is interesting. Far too much time is spent on the actual show though, making you think that the whole movie may as well have been one big recording of a dance show.

Music is kind of cheesy, specially the music in the Broadway production.

Acting is so-so. Cynthia Rhodes gives probably the only convincing performance. John Travolta is his usual one-dimensional self and Finola Hughes is irritating.