Best music of the 80's, I think I remember the 80's, and a great way to understand how the world worked in this story about how the Village people as a group came together, and there are a lot of soon to be stars got there start, and a sports star you may have heard of as of late, Great movie

It pains me not to give this movie five stars. What a magnificent failure! What fluff and froth! The perfect movie to watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon...or at 2:00 am when you find yourself suddenly awake and incapable of going back to sleep. CSTM is "quicker picker-upper" Nancy Walker's sole directorial effort (she's quoted on the DVD extra, "The Village People Story," as defining movies as "nothing but little pieces of ... snipped together"). Like Mae West's 1978 box office dud, "Sextette," CSTM has just about everything you'd expect to find in a camp classic (beautiful men, clever women, music, over-produced self-spoofing dance numbers, costumes, costumes, and more costumes)...everything except wit, that is. But camp humor is most successful when directed against a staid and self-satisfied oppressive regime. And CSTM (like "Sextette" before it) was conceived when disco was thriving, acceptance of gay and bi culture was at its peak, and most people still believed "whatever people did was okay as long as they didn't hurt anyone." Double entendres just don't have a reason to exist when there is no moral overlord to subvert. By the time CSTM was released in 1980, disco was as dead as Duncan in Act 2, Scene 3 of "Macbeth." A year later, rumors of a "gay cancer" would change the mood of the gay community forever (in fact, a decade later AIDS would take the life of Jacques Morali, one of CSTM's creators).
One wonders who Walker turned to for advice while making this film. It is a veritable Cornell box of filmic allusions (one thinks immediately of her own explanation of what she was doing). In defter hand, say Truffaut's, these efforts might be considered homages. But in Walker's, they seem to be more the bold thievings of a street Arab desperate to grab anything that might be sellable. Among the plundered are: Busby Berkeley (especially, "The Gang's All Here"), Howard Hawks (compare the YMCA number with Jane Russell's efforts to play games with the Olympic team in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"), "My Sister Eileen" (does anyone in Greenwich Village have an apartment the size of the ones in these two movies?), and every Mick and Judy "gee, it would be swell to put on a show" MGM musical. And then there's Marilyn Sokol, who turns in a fine performance in the Nancy Walker role of the homely-but-horny sidekick of the beautiful blonde lead. The Village People were great just being themselves. The only real disappointment was Bruce Jenner. He's not an actor and he has a high nasal voice that seems at odds with his athletic physique. One wonders if co-star Valerie Perrine wasn't speaking to Jenner the actor, rather than to his character, when she said, "It takes more than a pretty face."
My one remaining question is, if "Can't Stop the Music" is finally out on DVD, can "Valley of the Dolls" be far behind? Hey, Hollywood, what are you waiting for?!!!?

I only watched it because of "How Did This Get Made?" I do have a memory of it existing but never watched it before. I have to say it's the gayest movie I've ever seen, and I watch John Waters' movies.

I loved this movie just for the reason The Village People and Steve Guttenberg came out in it. Surprised by the okay acting skills of Bruce Jenner before he made the horrible mistake of being Cait Jenner. It is campy with funny 70's music from various artists and to see each member of the Village People come into the light as an individual instead of just as a group. If you want to be taken back in time where music was fun and you loved to dance than this movie is for you. I have seen this movie so many times just so I can listen to the music and think how great an era the 70's were.

It is a bit of a guilty pleasure! While the plot, acting etc. are average it brings back some fun memories and is just enjoyable to have on in the background. Give it a chance.

Camp is tricky. It's often difficult to separate the creator of the joke from the subject. "Can't Stop the Music" is camp, and the Village People are camp, so it might seem a perfect match. But this is a funny movie because it's bad, while the Village People were generally a funny group because they were entertaining.

I have a nostalgic affection for the Village People. They parodied the clone culture of the 70's--the first out, proud, masculine gay culture America had seen--but they were also the visual embodiment of it. They were camp in the truest sense, in that they (or more accurately, their creator, Jacques Morali) conveyed something important through frivolity and playfulness. To paraphrase Christopher Isherwood, they weren't making fun of something, they were making fun *out of* something.

And watching them here, they're still entertaining. Arlene Phillips' choreography works well and the songs themselves are enjoyable--the movie flopped, but the sountrack did a lot better, much like "Xanadu." If you're watching for the numbers, it's pretty good.

But the movie is also a lot like porn: if it gives you what you want, it also gives you a lot of what you don't, all of it as ineptly as possible. It has the Village People, some good character actors, and even a few good jokes (better than the first 15 minutes would lead you to expect). But it's a mess. Almost no plot point is motivated by logic. Characters make contradictory decisions just to keep things rolling. Alan Carr hired an almost entirely inexperienced cast and then put them in the hands of Nancy Walker, an almost entirely inexperienced director. So they screech their lines and overplay their scenes. It's not the performers' fault. Maybe it's not Walker's fault. But watching the movie is like watching Paula Prentiss' android replacement go berserk near the end of "The Stepford Wives": a machine built for pleasure has flown hopelessly out of control, and doesn't look like it would have provided much pleasure to begin with.

It's scitzoid. The whole movie has a weird sexual/non-sexual vibe. Early on, the movie plays up hot times, with disco dancing staged to look like sex. But then the middle section veers towards the chaste and innocent. Gutenberg supposedly wants roommate Perrine, but he half-grabs her with a nervous joke, like a 13 year old trying to touch a girl for the first time. When she asks what happened to his stewardesses (in the 70's sleeping with stewardesses was the generic swinger image), he says he's given up sex for his music. But he's just hit on her. The Village People become babes in the woods; they aren't straight, and they aren't gay, they're just amorphously hanging out. A Perrine and Bruce Jenner hetero love story starts and stops, for no real reasons (and more contradictions: he's getting divorced and wants to live freely, but he chases her even if he does't like how she lives, and suddenly at the end proposes marriage...did the divorce ever go through?). Still, there are lots of gay stereotypes: references to Garbo, to Micky-Judy musicals, shots of half-naked young men, and two, count 'em, two hovering, smothering mothers (their sons are so embarrassed but still love them) who solve all the movie's problems.

The "what are they trying to say" chaos becomes mindboggling if you bother to think about it. The finale is set at a San Francisco bash BUT it's hosted by prim, conservatively dressed ladies BUT it takes place at a supposedly wild disco one character describes as "one of the kinkiest things I've ever seen" BUT we never see anything kinky.

Carr actually took over direction for the YMCA number, and then it really does become porn. If you want to see a lot of anonymously sexy men naked and/or flexing, you get your fill. I got no problem looking at beautiful men, but the scene misses the point of the song: it kills the joke, and oddly enough doesn't relate the content (which encourages a young man to stop sulking and find his place in the gay community; it's a joke, but it's also about finding yourself. The staging for the movie is just a sausage fest.)

You can't help laughing and enjoying the mess of it, but it's also one of those no-win bad movie situations: only Alan Carr would have made a Village People movie, but almost anyone else could have made a *good* Village People movie. Still, you can enjoy the songs and the silliness. The movie's a botch, but it works in spite of itself. I have to admit I enjoy it.

WOW! what a wonderful transfer job that was done on this film. I have a DTS system and let me tell you folks, there is NOTHING like it. This film sound better and looked better in my home than it did when i saw it in the theatre.If any of you are really into sound and even if you don't have a DTS system, get this film anyway. Sure it's campy but it's FUN. I don't know how anyone could not have a good time watching this. It's ALIVE, it's REAL, it's FUN and don't forget to crank up the sound. Even my dad who is 78 got into this movie. It's a HAPPY and feel good film. I can't say enough great things about it.