One has to admit objectively that if you ignore the highly fictionalized plot, the script and the acting, there's a lot of fun to be had in 'CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC. The supposed story of hit disco group The Village people (blatantly, satirically "Hollywood cleaned up") was laughed off the screen when it first came out for picturing one of the most obviously successful (and successfully obvious) gay singing groups as having been brought together by their (literal) girlfriends.
Yeah, right.
...and yet, there is all that music. It's actually pretty darned good in a disco ball meets Busby Berkley fashion.
Producer Alan Carr, who effectively captured the cartoon style of the Broadway hit GREASE in a smash cartoon of a movie, gave Broadway, movie and TV comedienne Nancy Walker a chance to direct her first big budget Hollywood film in a day (not yet passed) when the number of major women directors could be counted on one hand - with several fingers left over. Sadly, the commercial fate of the film Carr wanted set the cause of women directors back another decade or two. The producer wanted a cartoon - it had worked with GREASE - and Walker gave him one - presumably trying to satirize the old movie bios (remember the factually ludicrous but musically satisfying NIGHT AND DAY or 'TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY?). They ignored the well known and reported facts of The Village People and expected their music to carry the film. Had they caught the peak of the group's vogue it might have worked, but the wave had already crested and the Post-Stonewall audience was ready to demand TRUTH, not obviously silly Hollywood myth.
The only real ongoing sin of CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC is the continuing involvement of its lead, the presumably straight but 8trying to be "enlightened" Steve Guttenberg, in gay associated projects which he has managed to "clean up" with an almost CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC-like, arguably homophobic, distortion. Note how when the play P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD (a flawed but enjoyable novel and play by CHORUS LINE writer James Kirkwood about a supposedly straight actor who finds a gay burglar in his apartment on New year's Eve and ultimately reaches an improbable rapprochement with him) that had a modest Broadway run and a successful life in stock was finally filmed in 2002 with Guttenberg in the lead and directing, he managed to leach almost every visage of legitimate gay "threat" or "edge" out of the actual staging! It became another dishonest cartoon and lost most of the target audience which was eagerly anticipating it.
In both CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC and P.S...., it just doesn't work when straight or closeted film makers try to play with "trendy" gay themes but can't bring themselves to do so honestly. It's also a recipe for commercial disaster on projects that could have offered so much honest entertainment for modern open audiences.
What a pity. There's still a LOT of fun to be had here, but you do have to ignore a lot to get to it.
Yeah, right.
...and yet, there is all that music. It's actually pretty darned good in a disco ball meets Busby Berkley fashion.
Producer Alan Carr, who effectively captured the cartoon style of the Broadway hit GREASE in a smash cartoon of a movie, gave Broadway, movie and TV comedienne Nancy Walker a chance to direct her first big budget Hollywood film in a day (not yet passed) when the number of major women directors could be counted on one hand - with several fingers left over. Sadly, the commercial fate of the film Carr wanted set the cause of women directors back another decade or two. The producer wanted a cartoon - it had worked with GREASE - and Walker gave him one - presumably trying to satirize the old movie bios (remember the factually ludicrous but musically satisfying NIGHT AND DAY or 'TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY?). They ignored the well known and reported facts of The Village People and expected their music to carry the film. Had they caught the peak of the group's vogue it might have worked, but the wave had already crested and the Post-Stonewall audience was ready to demand TRUTH, not obviously silly Hollywood myth.
The only real ongoing sin of CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC is the continuing involvement of its lead, the presumably straight but 8trying to be "enlightened" Steve Guttenberg, in gay associated projects which he has managed to "clean up" with an almost CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC-like, arguably homophobic, distortion. Note how when the play P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD (a flawed but enjoyable novel and play by CHORUS LINE writer James Kirkwood about a supposedly straight actor who finds a gay burglar in his apartment on New year's Eve and ultimately reaches an improbable rapprochement with him) that had a modest Broadway run and a successful life in stock was finally filmed in 2002 with Guttenberg in the lead and directing, he managed to leach almost every visage of legitimate gay "threat" or "edge" out of the actual staging! It became another dishonest cartoon and lost most of the target audience which was eagerly anticipating it.
In both CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC and P.S...., it just doesn't work when straight or closeted film makers try to play with "trendy" gay themes but can't bring themselves to do so honestly. It's also a recipe for commercial disaster on projects that could have offered so much honest entertainment for modern open audiences.
What a pity. There's still a LOT of fun to be had here, but you do have to ignore a lot to get to it.