"Saturday Night Fever" by John Badham: a review

The movie Saturday Night Fever was a huge hit when it was released in 1977. It was the start of Discomania. Saturday Night Fever took the world by storm and even film critic Gene Siskel claims to have seen the movie over 15 times. It is rumored that he purchased the original white disco suit worn in the movie for approximately $17,000 at a charity auction event.

John Travolta stars as Tony Manero, a young man with a horrible family life and a dead end job working in a hardware store. It takes place in Brooklyn, NY. The story follows Tony and his three best friends as they club hop all over the city. At night Tony becomes the King of the Disco. It’s like he becomes a whole different person once the sun goes down and dances like a green belt in training!

Donna Pescow plays the role of Annette his sometime dance partner. She is madly in love with him but he is not interested. There is a big dance competition and he asks her to be his dance partner. She gets very excited about it until he gets the chance to see another woman dancing and asks her to be his partner. She is Stephanie Margano who is both tall and attractive. This makes Annette very jealous and upset.

There is a lot of dancing, drinking, and risky behavior in this movie. It shows how each of the characters deals with their own personal problems. One boy in the group has a pregnant girlfriend. His parents want him to marry her and his friends say just dump her. It torments him until he cannot take anymore and something tragic happens to him.

The soundtrack to the movie Saturday Night Fever was a major success. The Bee Gees music is still popular today. The movie paved the way for more disco movies like Xanadu, Fame, and the sequel Staying Alive.

Saturday Night Fever introduces disco music and dance to mainstream America culture, spawning “disco fever” across the nation. From high school dances to adult dance clubs, everyone took part in the disco phenomenon.