Review: Can't Stop The Music!

People usually feel one of two ways about the 1980 Village People vehicle Can't Stop The Music:  Either they love it passionately and think the world would be perfect if life were a lot more like this movie; or they think it's the biggest disaster since... lice, or something equally reprehensible.  The fact that most people who have seen it seem to fall into the latter category has made Can't Stop The Music something of a cult film.  It's presently out of print on DVD, and copies can be hard to find (naturally I somehow have two copies).  But anyone who loves musicals, disco, roller skating, glitter, construction workers, Native Americans, cowboys, leathermen, motorcyle cops, sailors and/or army men, supermodels, milk, going to the gym, or just bad movies in general owes it to themself to see this movie at least once.  True, it's two hours you'll never get back, but it'll be the guiltiest pleasure you've had in quite a while.

Backstory:   Producer Allan Carr, fresh off the phenomenal success of 1978's Grease, attempted to make lightning strike twice by recruiting the then extremely hot Village People to star in what he imagined would purportedly be the greatest musical of all time (original title: Discoland).  He also rounded up Steve Guttenberg (Cocoon), Valerie Perrine (Superman), and Bruce Jenner (The Olympics, Wheaties Commercials) to "act" and, most bizarrely of all, he handed the directoral reigns to Nancy Walker, whose most notable claims to fame at this point were playing Valerie Harper's mom in the sitcom Rhoda, and hawking Bounty Paper Towels in TV commercials.  Depending on who you believe, generous amounts of cocaine prevented anyone involved in this debacle from getting that sinking feeling.

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a starving songwriter (Guttenberg) looking for a new disco-pop group to sing his songs and turn them into monster hits.  Not finding any such disco-pop group readily available, he gets his platonic supermodel roommate (Perrine), and her potential boyfriend/attorney (Jenner) to help him recruit singers from around NYC's Greenwich Village.  They just happen to settle upon a construction worker, a cowboy, a leatherman, a motorcycle cop, a Native American, and a sailor/army man and voila!  The Village People are born.  Numerous subplots and zany secondary characters are either extremely confusing or extremely annoying, or both. The dialogue is completely inane.  The acting performances are utterly embarrarrassing.  The music, with the exception of a couple of Village People songs you're already familiar with (most notably "YMCA") is execrable.  It's been directed with all the finesse of the Hindengburg disaster.  And I loved every minute of it!

What no one involved with this stinkeroo could, or would, foresee is that by the time production ceased and the editing process began, Disco as a music form had completely tanked.  Angry white straight men across the country wanted their heavy metal back on the radio and "Disco Sucks!" was their rallying cry.  Suburban kids were turning on to the new wave and punk sounds that had been simmering underground in urban nightspots for so long.  And rap music, rougher and more streetwise and relevant than Disco, was just around the musical corner.  And that's basically why this $30 million dollar movie laid the biggest egg this side of a pterodactyl nest at the box office.  It was just bad timing.  A lot of bad movies are hits.  (Overseas, however, Can't Stop The Music found receptive audiences, especially in Japan and Australia.)

In retrospect, I find this movie to be a time capsule of the last gasp of a more innocent time.  The Village People made several attempts to redefine themselves before accepting that their audience would only, ever, want to see them in hardhats and Indian headresses singing "YMCA" (which they still do to this day at casinos nationwide).   Nancy Walker never directed again (Somebody up there likes us), but she did appear in a recurring role in TV's The Golden Girls.  Producer Allan Carr never did equal his masterpiece, Grease, although he did produce at least two more noteworthy disasters, 1982's Grease 2 and 1984's Where The Boys Are '84.  Steve Guttenberg and Valerie Perrine gradually sank into relative obscurity.  And, in my mind, Bruce Jenner never again scaled the heights he ascended to in this movie as he strutted down the streets of New York in a half-shirt and hot pants.  I like the guy, but drastic plastic surgery and marrying into the Kardashian family seems somewhat anti-climactic. 

In closing, I would strongly urge everyone to see this movie.  It's as baffling and mystifying as The Tree Of Life, only without the respect and with a heck of a lot of Disco.