My Review of "Saturday Night Fever"

Saturday Night Fever is an iconic movie that came out back in 1977. This movie is over 40 years old yet some of the themes still hold true today. Obviously a lot of people will be offended with a lot of this movie. The worse of the worse things happen in this movie including blatant racism, rape and homophobia to name a few. You have to realize that this was a reality of the times back in 1977. Still the emphasis isn't on the horrors that happened back in the 70s. This movie is more about our relationships with one another. Many of those themes are still relevant today.

The movie starts out with a young 19 year old Tony. He's an Italian New Yorker and lives a regular day job at a hardware store. We're introduced to him as a very suave young man full of confidence and exuberance. He's got a way with talking to people that make them love him.

Once he comes home we realize he lives a second life. His family life isn't quite as nice and tidy. His father has lost his job in construction after he's worked for them for so long. With his father losing his job, the family's resources have to be stretched.

It also becomes pretty apparent that Tony's parents favor his older brother because he had become a priest. Apparently it gives them extra points in their religion to have their son in the church. Tony doesn't feel appreciated because of this. Needless to say tensions are high in his family household.

That could have been a movie altogether but Tony has a third life. His third life is his interactions with his friends and his dance at the disco dance club. Tony's confidence increases tenfold when he meets up with his buddies and even higher when he steps into the disco. The crowd seems to part for him and his friends. They even have their own booth reserved for them.

We soon discover that Tony's an absolutely amazing dancer. He'll rip it on the floor and all eyes are on him especially the ladies. I totally understand his attraction to the disco at this point because he's pretty much a king in this place.

His dance partner Annette, really adores Tony. She basically tries everything under the book to try to attract Tony but Tony isn't having it. She tells Tony that there's a dance competition at the disco with a big prize of $500. Tony agrees to join with her.

The problem is that he meets another dancer that he's smitten with by the name of Stephanie. After a ton of coaxing he finally gets her to agree to partner up with him for the dance competition. He quickly drops Annette for Stephanie and continually pursues Stephanie.

You'd think that this is what the story is about. In a way it is but it also isn't. The general theme is what Tony basically says in one of his scenes with Stephanie. Basically a everyone is dumping their crap on someone else. We realize that everyone in his circle has some sort of problem and is dumping their problems on the next available person around them.

Tony doesn't even realize this but he's doing the same thing that he's accusing everyone is doing to him. There are so many levels of dumping among all of the characters in this movie. We see all of the cascading effects of all of their actions. This is just like in the real world today. We all want a sense of power and importance and sometimes we don't realize what we're doing to the loved ones around us when we don't get it.

There are a few issues in this movie that a lot of people today may complain about before seeing this movie but they can be explained. The amount of racism is quite rampant in this movie. It should be noted that the genre of disco music comes from Black Americans. Some would complain that this movie is appropriation of Black culture and in some ways it is, however it is also explained that they are in an Italian neighborhood. The racism was probably like this in the 70s. Areas of the city were and still are segregated by cultures. There were still Black and Latin dancers at the very last dance. If they had done this any other way the realism would have been taken out of the movie.

This goes the same for the sexism and homophobia that ran rampant in the movie. There are even rape scenes in this movie and it's absolutely atrocious but I do believe that things actually happened this way back in the 70s and we shouldn't shy away and hide the horrors that happened in the past. We have to know that they actually happened. The best we can do is educate the people today to realize that we don't want us to ever revert back to the way things were back in the day. Even if those years may seem really glamorous.

So you can probably tell I liked that they told the story as realistic as it was back in the day. It held no punches when they built the environment that Tony lived in.

I also loved the soundtrack of this movie. It really added a huge element to the movie and almost felt like a character on its own. After listening to the music in this movie you'll understand why people gravitated to not only this movie but the music at the time.

Overall, I would say that this movie is definitely for everyone. It's not really a dance movie but more of an exploration of the personal relationships with the characters and the 70s in general. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. A word of warning it is definitely not for everyone. There are some pretty heavy things that happen in this movie that may trigger a ton of people today.