I'm a little kid in the late 70's sitting in my
grandma's kitchen, listening to my little portable tape
deck... you know, the kind you had to press the two buttons
down to record something... and rocking some 'Macho Man'. My
uncle walks in, hears the song and in his special,
neo-intellectual style, informs nine-year old me something
along the lines that "You do realize that the Village People
are the manifestation and the pure representation of the
homosexual culture of the San Francisco gay counter
revolution?" Or something like that. So I'm staring at this
whackjob of an uncle of mine, who is supposed to be the
'smart one' in the family, and simply nodded because I
didn't want to call him out in front of everybody, thus
crushing him with my nine year old intellect in front of the
entire clan, despite his uppity law degrees and PhD's. I
knew with some certainty there is clearly no way that an
Indian Chief, a cop, a soldier, a cowboy, a construction
worker, and a hardcore biker dude… a group that ONLY sings
about manly stuff... could ever be the 'manifestation' of
anything gay. Idiot uncle. Of course maybe in retrospect the
Village People might've been a little bit gay. Just a
little. Or, just a lot, if one happened to see the Classic
for All the Wrong Reasons, 'Can't Stop the Music' made way
back in 1980, which I just saw yesterday, for the first
time, in this year of 2015. And it is absolutely terrible.
Our film has an interesting beginning. Jack Morell (Steve
Guttenberg) quits his job at a record store and then
proceeds to rollerskate through New York City, for the
entirety of the extra long opening credits. These never
ending credits have a few things to note. One, watching The
Gutes excitedly skate throughout this scene will prep you
for the CRAZY amount of energy this cat will project
throughout this ENTIRE movie. My man had to be hyped up on
the most awesome cocaine bender ever as he was so pumped for
this movie that were times I thought his head was going to
explode. Then you will notice that while all bad music is
not good, bad disco has got to be the worst. Bad disco is
terrible, grating, repetitive and never ending. I did not
realize this before this day because
Bad Disco rarely saw the radio light of day.
Good disco, say like Good Times by Chic or Boogie Wonderland
by EWF or even the afore mentioned Macho Man is also
repetitive, but it's catchy and enjoyable in its
repetitiveness. Then, as these credits come to its merciful
end, you will see the name of the director… Nancy Walker.
Wait… Rhoda's mom Nancy Walker? The Quicker Picker Upper
Nancy Walker? Yep, that Nancy Walker. Amazing.
Anyway, Jack just wants to be a super DJ and song writer,
his platonic house mate, retired supermodel Samantha
(Valerie Perrine) wants to help so she actively becomes
Jack's manager. What Jack needs is some singers, Samantha
knows a few manly guys, say like her other house mate Felipe
(Felipe Rose) who dresses like an Indian chief and wears a
pair of short jean cut-offs that Daisy Duke would be
embarrassed to wear. And he likes to bend over in them.
Samantha invites these manly dudes she happens to know to
her house for a dinner and a jam session to work out on some
of Jack's compositions, her good friend Alicia (Altovise
Davis) is Black so she brings the black people in, like the
cop and the soldier, and since they are from the village,
the Village People are born! Yay.
Oh! And Bruce Jenner shows up at this dinner. Why this
corporate tax attorney who never met any of these people is
there is super stupid, so we won't worry about it, but there
he is. Bruce Freaking Jenner. And while this movie is
terrible, Bruce Jenner is not terrible in this movie.
Hardly. I am somewhat surprised that he didn't do more
athletic stuff, like early in the movie when he was robbed
at gunpoint by an old lady on a moped. I figured, since this
guys was a world class athlete and all, he was gonna run
that old biddy down and beat her to death, but no… Rhoda's
mom made him act it out. A lot of other stuff happens in
this movie, mostly a lot of singing and dancing, until the
Village People are born and History is made.
True enough, 'Can't Stop the Music' is a hot mess. It's
scatterbrained, erratic, mostly poorly acted and directed,
dumbfounding, bizarre, shocking, uncomfortable… and probably
one of the stranger offerings for a family friendly film you
will ever want to see. The YMCA scene, despite the
awesomeness of the song, with all of its naked men… junk
flopping for all to see… glistening men, hurdling men,
diving men, Greco-Roman wrestling men, the gayest boxing
match you will ever want to witness, and a topless Valerie
Perrine splashing in a hot tub surrounded by more
glistening, naked men… what the hell was that? I think
watching the entirety of that scene actually made me a
little bit gay. At least until we got to the staged scene
featuring the Ritchie Family performing which kind of reset
my heterosexuality back to normal. Those sisters sure are
fine, plus with the odd and semi-inappropriate camera angles
that Rhoda's Mom was choosing to film the scene, to catch
every pelvic thrust, squat and bent over row… Good job Nancy
Walker… good job.
But at the heart of this film is Steve Guttenberg. And the
music. Man, Guttenberg was on FIRE! He yelled most of his
lines, he was always in constant motion, he was so giddy and
excitable that in a better movie this manic energy might've
been infectious, as opposed to the way it turned out, which
was super annoying. But fortunately for Gutes, never far
behind his manic behavior was one of the Jaques Morali
composed disco songs. Full songs. Full sets. Almost all
terrible. Construction dudes song 'I Love you to Death'
where he pretended to like girls? Terrible. Valerie
Perrine's ode called Samantha? Terrible, repetitive,
endless. The Milkshake song, a corporate commercial where
our Village heroes pelvic thrusted behind bent over scantily
clad women in an effort to sell milk… terrible, endless,
repetitive, deeply disturbing. Even the title song to close
out the show was fairly awful.
'Can't Stop the Music' was an experience, that much we will
admit to. Not the most positive experience, especially
considering by the time this movie came out Disco was all
but dead, but an experience none the less. Rhoda's mom. Who
knew?
