Oh, boy, where do we begin with Staying Alive. This is the sequel to the wildly popular Saturday Night Fever, a story about Tony Manero, an Italian-American dude from New York when it was still deliciously dirty, trying to hustle his way through life during the day and lives his dreams at night doing the thing he’s best at - cruising chicks and disco dancing. This continuation is yet another price of fame movie, but really more like the price of mediocrity and showing off for your Ma.
So this movie starts right away with 80s music, leotards and extreme dancing! MONTAGE! Everyone is just dancing and sweating and auditioning sooooo hard. Tony Manero is no longer disco dancing, nope he’s gone legits, and he wants to be on Broadway! He wiggles his pelvis and eye fucks every woman insight. His oblivious girlfriend is also auditioning. They’re having a good time and going for it together, meanwhile he’s making it with every girl that glances in his direction. All of the actors are really full on dancing - no body doubles here. The dance moves are completely ridiculous. And it’s only the first five minutes!
We get another immediate MONTAGE! We see Tony juggling his jobs as a dance teacher and as a fancy waiter. We also get a Sly Stallone cameo as Tony is bouncing from one place to another. They look back at each other and give this strange look. As if Sly is silently saying, do you know how bad I’m about to damage our careers? So, so badly.
So we see that Tony lives in a teeny room in a boarding house. He shares a phone with the residents. He owns like 2 or 3 outfits and washes his clothes in the shower with him, we don’t really see him eat or drink much. We get the impression that he’s suppose to be ripped muscle wise. I guess he’s kinda ripped? Ripped for John Travolta, anyway. Director and co-writer Sly Stallone was training him for the role - in which, according to the script, he was supposed to be really big, like super hero muscular. Nope.
At this point the fellas and I are 27 minutes into the movie and we are on our FOURTH MOVIE MONTAGE! I feel like my brain might explode with the leotardedness of it all. Suddenly, Tony finally nails an audition! You’d almost be excited for him if he wasn’t such a jerk. He goes and calls the only connection to the first movie we’ve seen, his mama. He’s so excited, he tells her he got a real job on Broadway - and she automatically assumes it’s stripping! He sputters like the Tony we remember and tells her it’s a real show and he’s gonna spend a whole $27 on her ticket!
Tony starts striking it up with the limo driven prima starlet of his new Broadway show, Satan’s Alley. They have this weird competitive love hate thing going on right from the jump. Played by Finola Hughes, she makes it clear that Tony isn’t good enough for her or the show, and she matches his narcism and cunning. Tony flaunts his relationship with Finola right in front of Cynthia Rhodes - his girlfriend, and then denies, denies, denies when she asks him what’s up with that girl. It almost becomes a battle between the two ladies over him. Why? Who knows! He’s a total slime bucket!
Eventually they both are over it and quarrel with him, Cynthia is moving on to her musician band mate, Frank Stallone and Finola to pretty much any man she wants, leaving Tony to go on a I have a sad weiner walk, and trip that leads him back home at his mother’s house. Even she doesn’t want him there! When she asks why he came, he apologizes for being a jerk all of his life and so full of attitude. Apparently, it took women not wanting to bang him anymore to come to that conclusion. His mother tells him not to apologize, he must have been doing something right, because attitude got him out of that neighborhood. (And into living in a boarding house?) To which he responds:
“So what you’re sayin’ is I’ve always been this bastard, but it’s alright, because like - it comes naturally to me.” And then she says “Something like that… Yeah. YEAH. Double yeah!”
Like what you’re sayin’ is I don’t need any redemption as a piece of shit human right? Yeah. Double yeah!
So Tony heads back home with a new attitude, sort of, and he wants Cynthia Rhodes back. You know what that means? Another mutha fuckin MONTAGE! So they have a weird love dance montage that signifies their back together and she’s totes going to dump Frank Stallone, even though he doesn’t cheat on her and treat her as second best. Because love? I guess.
Now it’s time to kick some ass as everyone is getting ready for the opening of Satan’s Asshole, oh I mean ALLEY, Satan’s Alley. Finola and Tony are dancing to a song that just randomly yells the words DANCE! And FIRE! Over an electronic drum beat. Oooh, arty guys. Tony has a little I’m the star meltdown.The director explodes at him and says everything you’re thinking - that his dick and his narcism are ruining everything and if he wants to be a star to stop being such an asshole and focus on the SHOW. Like yes!!! FINALLY! Someone is saying something intelligent and Tony has an actual consequence of his behavior! But that feeling won’t last for long! Cause we’ve got a getting the show ready MONTAGE!
We are literally up to 6 or 7 montages now. I’ve lost track and they’re all becoming one big blur. My guess is the script was like 30 pages because every few pages it just says like 8 lines and then [ poorly executed dance montage ].
At long last, we finally get to see Satan’s Alley - and it is one spectacular shined up turd. There is so much dry ice, it takes a minute to clear enough to see anyone. At first view, it feels like watching an insane S&M zombie musical, but instead of zombies it’s very sweaty, oiled up glistening people. They use every chance they get to show off Travolta shirtless, shiny and in a loincloth. If you’re into moist men, it could be sexy, I guess. Just don’t let his skin touch any of your fabrics. Now that’s a stain!
Things go super cuckoo bananas as the show kicks into high gear and becomes an almost exact replica of Goddess’s S&M number in Showgirls.(Or other way around, but I refuse to think Showgirls stole anything.) Except instead we get Travolta battling Finola Hughes for control and stardom, live and on stage! His ego monster emerges as he tries to end the number by planting a kiss on her. Angry and embarrassed she literally tries to scratch his eye out just narrowly missing, and runs off stage. Everyone yells at him for improvising and assholing off again. His girlfriend also sees this and is none too pleased. I mean the Love Montage was only 2 montages ago guys. Sad face!
We get another MONTAGE! This time on stage, and it’s all just kicky, arty jumps and leaps. At the end of the show, Tony leaps onto a giant disc like he’s in Cats. Every character gets a shocked face shot yelling something like OMG What’s he doing! Finola Hughes freezes, panics and is like oh no what do I do? Literally, everyone on stage is telling her to jump on the disc thing too. She acts like she has no clue how to jump and then suddenly leaps up and Travolta does a Dirty Dancing style lift, but as a one handed hold that is probably going to hurt like Hell in the morning. (Weirdly enough, Patrick Swayze is a background dancer in a few of these scenes. Shit are we talking about stealing again?) Tony is grunting and dripping sweat everywhere. Everyone wildly applauds, his mama cries, and now they’re both big stars. Cynthia Rhodes even pretends that kiss with Finola never happened and cries as well.
When the show is over Tony tells Cynthia Rhodes he wants to start over and be with her. He kisses her, while creepily staring at Finola Hughes. Cynthia gets all happy for no reason and says like OMG Tony, you’re like a big bright shining star. What do you want to do now? What do you think he wants to do? Nope, not cheat on you AGAIN with Finola Hughes... yet!
He wants to strut! And cue those beautiful Bee Gees! He literally leaves Cynthia Rhodes in an alley and struts through Manhattan alone. THE END!
Perhaps you thought this soundtrack would be dominated by the Bee Gees once more, well it sort of is. They are less than half of the music on the soundtrack. But the real domination is the sounds of Frank Stallone. Here’s an interesting Plissken fact, Ty Burger-ler is a HUGE Frank Stallone fan! Not just for his acting - but for his sweet sweet jams! He had never seen Staying Alive before we reviewed it But I remember back in the day, when we all worked as lowly video store employees, Ty would sneak Frank Stallone albums into the store rotation. Well, Ty must have been elated with joy, because Frank Stallone has no less than TWENTY vanity credits in this movie!
I’d also like to mention, I think Finola Hughes knows exactly what movie she is in. In fact this movie flung her right into soap opera stardom, where she has stayed for, a few decades now, serving time on both All My Children and General Hospital. We’ll actually be discussing her very first movie - The Apple, in a future Plissken review. (Geez, no wonder she was banished to the soap opera Forbidden Zone.)
If you want to blame someone for this dry ice, glittered up mess, you can blame John Travolta directly. For a while, Travolta had no intention of doing a Saturday Night Fever sequel. He even turned down $10 million dollars to revive his role. But while on a vacation he saw Rocky III, and was so impressed, he said he’d do a part two, if they got Sly Stallone to write and direct.
At the end of the day, this is a movie made, almost completely, of montages! It’s about a piece of shit character, who attempts to redeem himself, but doesn’t really learn all that much. Maybe possibly, he learned to keep his dick in his pants, but that’s doubtful. I’m sure he’ll be back to being that unlovable asshole in no time! Just another tale of unlikable characters that destroyed an entire movie with dance.
TY - 3 Plisskens MATT - 2 Plisskens JILL - 3 ½ Plisskens
References:
Staying Alive - So Bad But So Good -
