Customer Reviews

Staying Alive [Region 2]

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Staying Alive is definitely not the best movie ever made but one I continually go back to - mainly for the music. The soundtrack was understandably ignored because Saturday Night Fever was such a masterpiece but the new Bee Gees songs are terrific, Frank Stallone's songs are good and Cynthia Rhodes is wonderful as well. I don't understand why she didn't have a bigger career. She's a great dancer and singer. Finola Hughes has some terrific dance scenes too - especially the one in which John Travolta first sees her. I agree with critics that the storyline is not that great and you do wonder what happened to all of Tony's family and friends. But the movie is worth seeing - just not to be taken too seriously. Definately worth buying the soundtrack. Pay special attention to "Moody Girl" - "Life Goes On" - and "Finding Out the Hard Way"

Six years after "Saturday Night Fever", Tony Manero is a waiter struggling to make it on Broadway. He lives in a fleabag hotel and does his laundry in the shower. His character has matured, but he still disses the nice girl who adores him (Cynthia Rhoades) while pining for a pompous snot-nose (Finola Hughes). Now viewed as a 1980's camp classic (and a good bad movie), the film suffers from director Stallone's infusion of a "Rocky" formula and a certain blandness - the characters here don't generate half the interest of those in the original film. I actually think some of them, like Tony's dance partner and brother (Karen Lynn Gorney and Martin Shaker) could have been carried over into this movie, as their characters still could have gone places. Travolta has a laughable scene with his mother (Julie Bovasso, the only returning cast member) and the finale - "Satan's Alley" plays like an extended MTV video. Frank Stallone contributes most of the songs (bite my tongue) and The Bee Gees offer a few minor but worthy tunes. A hefty dose of flashy early '80's nostalgia, but not much else.

Although I tend to agree with most everyone about the storyline, I feel that Cynthia Rhodes, as Jackie, displayed a depth of talent that Stallone and Travolta could only dream of. Her dancing was as hot as the lead's (Finola Hughes) when she helps Travolta prep for the lead. Her singing has emotion and depth, and she displayed great acting ability. (Check out the scene where she walks away from John after he makes a date to meet with her, and then flirts with Finola Hughes as Cynthia walks around the corner. She stops and looks back pensively and without a word shows more emotional range in that look than Travolta does throughout the whole movie.) I agree with the reviewer who wonders why this gorgeous, talented actress has not had more success in the business than she has. Cynthia is the only reason why I watch this movie whenever it comes on.

Sometimes timing is everything for a movie. One would think if you make a sequel to one of the most successful movies ever, "Saturday Night Fever" (complete with its original star John Travolta) and bring in a superstar like Sylvester Stallone to write and direct - it should be primed for an instant hit. However, this 1983 sequel "Staying Alive" was not a commercial success. Some may even deem it a failure. Like most sequels, it does fall short of the original movie. But "Staying Alive" isn't that bad a movie. The problem with "Staying Alive" is it came out on the coattails of the anti-Disco movement. "Saturday Night Fever" epitomized everything about the Disco movement. While "Staying Alive" isn't a movie about the Disco era, it still is associated with it. But I think it still was never given the chance it should have had.

"Staying Alive" continues the story of Tony Manero. In "Saturday Night Fever", John Travolta played Tony, a 19 year old from Bay Ridge Brooklyn - he was in a dead end job going nowhere while dealing with never meeting his family's expectations. However, when Tony went to the local Disco - he was instantly transformed into an icon because of his talent on the dance floor. This talent, combined with Tony's personality gave him almost a royalty status. By the end of "Saturday Night Fever", Tony realizes he needs to take control of his life - thus this sets the stage for "Staying Alive". "Staying Alive" takes place six years later. In this, Tony is now trying to make it as a Professional Dancer in Manhattan. In order to make ends meet, he waits tables and teaches dance class. Tony then gets an opportunity to be a dancer in a Broadway Musical - this eventually turns into a lead opportunity.

In "Saturday Night Fever", there were two women in Tony's life - Annette and Stephanie. Annette was a girl who worshipped Tony, but Tony wanted nothing to do with her. Stephanie - was an upcoming career girl who was a fabulous dancer. Although Stephanie came from a similar background from Tony, she had gotten out of the Bay Ridge scene - and would unintentionally become a catalyst for Tony to do the same. In "Staying Alive", there are two women as well: Jackie - a dancer/singer played by Cynthia Rhodes who was Tony's on again/off again girlfriend. The other woman is Laura - an established and famous Dancer, whom like Stephanie - Tony will get infatuated with. Both are going to be in the Broadway Show that Tony is in - with Laura as the female lead.

One thing that made "Saturday Night Fever" great was the humor. "Staying Alive" does a very good job in this department. In a lot of ways, Stallone uses the humor to soften up Tony Manero's personality. As a result, it really is Tony's humor that is the main source of the humor throughout the movie. The scenes in Tony's boarding house are very funny - particularly how Tony deals with the less than dynanic neighbors in which he has nothing in common. The other source of humor comes from Flo Manero - Tony's mother. Flo is played by Julie Bovasso - the only other character to return to the sequel from the original movie.

The one thing that is disappointing is that it is only Tony and Flo who are the returning characters from "Saturday Night Fever". One thing that made "Saturday Night Fever" so great were that there were some great characters that surrounded Tony - in particular Tony's friends (Double J, Joey, Gus, Bobby C) and Tony's family (Frank Manero, Father Frank, Tony's Grandmother, and Tony's younger sister). While I don't think you could have brought back all of the characters (in particular Bobby C dies in "Saturday Night Fever"), some of the characters would have been nice. I would have also liked to have seen Tony's new maturity and how it reflected on his friends.

One of the strong performances of "Staying Alive" comes from Steve Inwood. Inwood plays Jesse - he is the Director of the Musical that Tony is in. Inwood delivers the role with a lot of intensity and makes you really think he is a director. I was surprised that such a performance did not lead to more opportunities for Inwood because it was such a good performance.

There are some interesting appearances and cameos in the movie. Director Sylvester Stallone makes an uncredited cameo as someone whom Tony bumps into on the street. Patrick Swayze also has a uncredited cameo as a dancer (kind of ironic because Cynthia Rhodes would go on to star in his big "dance" movie - "Dirty Dancing"). Sylvester Stallone's brother Frank plays Carl - a singer in the band whom Jackie is in. There are also some humorous scenes with Tony and Carl.

The music in "Staying Alive" isn't as strong as "Saturday Night Fever". The BeeGees are back for some new songs, but these songs are not Disco Dance songs - they are more reflective of the Adult Contemporary style they adopted in the 80s. Frank Stallone, Tommy Faragher, and Cynthia Rhodes also contribute songs to the soundtrack. These songs are definitely reflective of the Synth Pop style of 1983. They are decent songs, but it would be a great injustice to compare this soundtrack to the landmark soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever".

Overall, this is still a very good movie. The ending is a little weak - namely because finale deals with the opening of the show and I think Stallone over engineered the finale to try to build some excitement. In particular, I didn't think dirty laundry needed to be aired on the dance floor. I think if this was released a few years earlier or a few years later, it would have done better at the box office. I'd still recommend checking it out.

I think this movie would have been a hit if the story would have been different. Cynthia Rhodes plays Tony's passive yet sweet girlfriend, Finola Hughes plays Tony's famous and successful obsession. Tony is seeing Rhodes at the beginning of the movie, then starts cheating on her with Hughes, who plays a good, uh, bee with an itch. :) If that sounds dumb, sorry, but I doubt amazon.com wants the actual word spelled out! Anyway, Rhodes follows Tony around like a newborn puppy and accepts whatever he dishes out. Though likable, she is a little bit pathetic. Hughes plays a character one just has to love to hate! There is so much chemistry between her and Travolta I almost hoped he would choose her. As for the Broadway finale, I loved it! A friend who is a ballet dancer points out he really doesn't dance much, just spins around and jumps, but from a shallow point of view, HE IS HOT! Hughes is great, as is Rhodes, though she is rarely shown dancing. If you want to see her dance, watch Dirty Dancing. She plays Penny, the instructor who got into "trouble". As for the rest of SA, it bothered me that none of Tony's old friends were mentioned. We see his mother, but they don't talk about the family or how Tony coped with his friend's suicide. And where was his girlfriend from Fever?! Good movie, but horrible writing!

Thank the Amazon reviewer for his d@mning review of this movie - should you dare to watch it, you may be pleasantly surprised! Both the women in Tony's life give excellent performances, one devoted and warm, the other chilly cool, rich, talented, fiercely independent. I thought Travolta was doing just fine in this role, which still seemed tailor-made for him and better than a lot of his 'come-back' movies in the 90s. Granted, the 80s broadway dance scenes do go on, but then.. so do I.

This movie went out of favor around the time of the "disco sucks" backlash that reared it's head a few years after the SNF and disco movement of the late 70s went out. Incidentally, now we know that disco is cool. Not that this movie is 'disco' - it's more akin to 80s pop and aerobics music (with several Bee Gees numbers in there just for perspective). I found Tony's girlfriend's performance of "Fadin Away" quite moving and could occasionally appreciate some of the over-the-top dance numbers as a slice of that era known as the early 80s. The first good half of the movie is pretty solid with a fair amount of sexual tension between Tony and the two ladies of the show. Tony's character having matured a bit is a refreshing twist, though he's still got 'the fever' thank God. Opening night on Broadway towards the end is a bit longish. You have to suffer though more bad 80s music, but a few heroic gestures in it all make things more or less right. With the Amazon review having prepared me for much worse, this movie wasn't all that bad.

I'm not going to say this is the best movie ever made, but I won't deny I've seen it dozens of times, and that it's one of my all-time favorites. Part of the reason that it's become one of those movies people love to hate is that, of course, it's a sequel to a genuinely really good film, a serious movie that's not really about dancing at all, Saturday Night Fever. If you can set aside the comparison and the anger that Stallone may have "ruined" the attempt at a good sequel (please--as if SNF even had a possibility for a serious sequel!), then you can enjoy this movie on its own level, as a fun piece of sexploitation with a dance twist not at all different from that other big 80's dance movie, Flashdance.

As such, it's fantastic. Tony Manero has made it across the bridge and now he has his sights set on a starring Broadway role. It's hard, of course, and although he's a fine dancer, he must struggle through two jobs (dance instructor and hot waiter) while trying to break into showbiz. He shares the struggle with the single most underrated 80's icon, Cynthia Rhodes (also in Flashdance and Dirty Dancing). He likes her well enough but likes Finola Hughes (Blossom, How Do I Look?) much better, echoing the struggle between okay and just great loves he had in SNF. His one-night-stand with Laura (Hughes) gets him a part in a musical called Satan's Alley (a Dante-meets-Fosse extravaganza). When the surreptitiously gay male lead turns out to be "too mechanical" to get the sparks going with sultry Laura, Tony replaces him successfully (he has "anger" and "intensity"). Tension is created by the most ordinary love triangle, and just before the final act on opening night Laura tries to deflate an exuberant Tony after he rejects her invitation to get together after the show by telling him he doesn't "have it." To prove he does, Tony spins her into a smoke cloud and performs an impromptu solo that proves to all that he indeed has "it" and then some. The movie ends with the simplest of all conclusions: yep, Tony made it!

Sounds awful? It is! On the one hand, you can almost see the idea behind this plot, some genuine (if horribly executed) effort at continuing SNF's storyline: was Tony serious about leaving all the Brooklyn b-llsh-t behind him after he realizes the emptiness of his life that horrible night? Could he really learn to respect women, even to be a friend to one? Did he have what it takes to make it outside his small pond? On the other, apparently no one was able to provide satisfying answers to these questions. The love triangle doesn't move beyond the original; it mocks it. The Tony Manero character doesn't seem to grow at all. If anything, it's even less introspective.

But trying to evaluate a plot in a movie like this is like trying to find profundity in an episode of Charlie's Angels. What makes this movie good is exactly what makes it bad, too. Travolta was never in better shape in his life, and he dances well. This can be either gross or riveting. I don't know if Hughes did her own dancing (seems so), but she's supple and sexy, if not as absolutely liquid as Rhodes, who is mesmerizing. Some dance sequences are great; some just awful (the strobe sequence is laugh-out-loud ridiculous). Some music is great ("Someone Belonging to Someone" by the Bee Gees); some pap ("Never Gonna Give You Up"). The fact that the plot and the dialogue are skimpy is actually a blessing. Do you really want to hear these people talking? No. The music does the talking, when it's good.

Here's what I propose: I propose that, if this had been a stand-alone film, if the plot were just background and SNF had never been made, this movie would be as beloved as Flashdance or Footloose or Dirty Dancing or any of those. Some people don't like these either, but that's okay because nobody likes them.

That's right, it's in the Warhol Diaries. Pop-Art Superstar Andy Warhol went to the premiere, and wrote, "I loved it" in his diary. Receiving two Golden Raspberry Awards, and notoriously dubbed as the "worst sequel EVER," over 25 years later, the debate rages on. Even though critics and some fans of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER hated it, it was one of the top grossing films of 1983.

This is one of those flicks that I watch every time they run it on TV. (Now I own a copy on DVD.) Even though I'm biased because I love almost anything 80's, I've always wondered what it is about this flick that makes me want to watch it again and again. (I'm sure I've watched this almost as many times as I've watched SNF.)

1. Like the late Gene Siskel, whose alltime favorite film was SNF (he even bought Travolta's white disco suit at auction), there is the male fantasy aspect of wanting to be the King of The Dance Floor. 2. It's Travolta as Tony Manero. He was cut, well oiled, and could dance like few actors of his generation could. Say what you want about his acting in this (I think he's great), his dancing in this film is amazing. 3. Even though the script is hammy and predictable, the characterization of Manero as the egotistical "p" hound is intact. "I thought I was being sort of charming..." The script is also funny, and has some great oneliners: "I guess I'll have to cancel that brain operation." 4. Two very hot actresses, Cynthia Rhodes (who does her own singing) and Britain's Finola Hughes in tight leotards perform some very sexy super duper slo-mo dance moves. If you appreciate kama sutra paintings, you're gonna love this flick. The routines are extremely sexual. There are a ton of tight butts, legs, and thighs floating thru the shots. Reason enough to give this Five Stars. 5. Great 80's Pop music from The Bee Gees, Cynthia Rhodes, and Frank Stallone. (Frank Stallone still has a great voice.) 6. A great climactic Broadway Dance sequence, well choreographed, and marvelously directed by Sly Stallone. (Everyone knows the story of Travolta crying when he saw the first cut of his solo dance number in SNF. The director John Badham had cut off Travolta from the waist down in the first edit of SNF. Travolta went into the editing room himself and recut the sequence using the master shots.) Say what you want about the camp and the script, Sly's direction is very very good here. Whether you prefer the disco dancing in SNF or the interpretive dancing in SA, the direction of the dance sequences in SA are just as good as the sequences in SNF. And, 7. This flick contains the Best Feelgood Final Movie Line EVER! (see below)

Yeah, the Broadway Show SATAN'S ALLEY is total camp, but it's a perfect slice of pure 80's Broadway dance extravaganza. This is one of those films that absolutely captures the 80's in all of its slick Pop Culture Flash. (Those that loath 80's Pop Culture should stay far far away from this flick. It's just oozes 80's Pop-Art sensibilites and dance.) A perfect time capsule of the 80's. It's now a part of Paramount's I LOVE THE 80'S DVD Series. And rightfully so.

IMHO, this is a PERFECT sequel to a Late 70's cultural phenomenon- SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER. And, a wonderfully directed Pop-Art Dance Film. Guilty or not, if you love dance and the Tony Manero character, this flick is just a real pleasure. Period.

Makes a great 80's Double Feature alongside FOOTLOOSE or FLASHDANCE.

I only wish the soundtrack CD was still in print.

The lastest I LOVE THE 80'S DVD transfer has great 5.1 sound, good color timing, and looks great on my 51" plasma with some very minor adjustment. But, the print is a tad dirty and it could still stand a remastering job. There are NO extras. (Under PRODUCT DETAILS, Amazon lists 2 Discs for the entire I LOVE THE 80'S DVD Series. FALSE and MISLEADING! The entire Paramount Series are bare-bones Single Disc DVDs! Act accordingly!) Shamefully, there should have been a 25th Anniversary Edition, with a look back by the cast and crew. Here's hoping someone does justice to the 30th Anniversary Edition. Until then...

"I'm gonna strut."

Enjoy.

It's not Saturday Night Fever; it's not a timepiece and it doesn't have a storyline that is quite as intense. And the music, although catchy and even well written at points, cannot match the brilliance of SNF's.

That said, this movie is an excellent follow-up that takes Tony Manero in a new direction, where he gets "his" and grows as a result. I always thought this movie was a great companion to SNF and, if taken on its own, holds up decently well. In addition, there is some incredible dancing that is just plain fun to watch.

Give it an open-minded look and you will not be disappointed.

First off, John Travolta looks stunning in this movie. He is very fit and trim. Finola Hughes is gorgeous and very elegant. Cynthia Rhodes is a knockout and portrays her character, Jackie, with so much emotion. I think this is a fantastic movie. Since I was too young to see Sat Night Fever when it first came out, I didn't really understand all the ins/outs of Tony Manero. Having seen SNF as an adult, I really didn't like it and I thought that Staying Alive could have stood on its own. The plot was good, the dancing was fantastic, as was the music, and the actors were all really good. I think this is an all around excellent movie and it is absolutely one of my favorites. I actually watch this one quite a bit.