Jamie
Sigh, we are coming to the end. We are a Sly Stallone based venture. We operate on the Stallonian calendar which promises a Stallone flick every year with 53 Thursdays. Last Thursday of such a year is Stallone Day and celebrates all things Sly. This is all detailed on the website. Anyway, we are nearing the end of unique qualifying films and when we run out a question will arise that can only be answered by the BMT Council of Elders( BMTCoE). Some might be asking why I’m mentioning this before diving into Staying Alive. To those people I will simply say, “Get out! Shoo!” and throw pebbles at you until you leave. Staying Alive is the only film that Sly directed but did have a role in (not counting his uncredited appearance in the film). He’s also written two Statham films that he wasn’t in, but neither of them qualified. Truly unique. So keep in mind that this is a very special episode.
To recap, our hero Tony Manero is trying to make it in the Big Apple. He teaches dance classes to make a buck while going on audition after audition. It seems like he will never get his chance and it’s incredibly frustrating. He’s got a cool girlfriend, Jackie, but he even takes that for granted, sleeping with a star dancer that has blown into town for a new show, Satan’s Alley. At the auditions for Satan’s Alley they all get parts. Tony is very excited but also doesn’t love how small a part he has. Realizing he’s done Jackie dirty, he apologizes and asks for help practicing the lead dance in the show. He seems the main dancer is struggling and wants to take a shot at replacing him. When the time comes he pretty much botches it and the demanding director is like “ha, you suck.” This makes him feel like quitting, but Jackie is like “you can’t” cause she’s the coolest. He’s like OK and gives it another go and dances like a god dang star. The director? He’s like “Wow. OK. You have the part.” At the premier, Tony dances like a star again and the star dancer is angry because he’s using their chemistry against her. But this explodes on stage in the second half in what can only be described as literally the sexiest dancing scene in the history of cinema and in no way is it dumb and silly. By going off script, Tony becomes a hero of dance and the whole cast celebrates his one-of-a-kind achievement. Tony wins. THE END.
Hahaha, the crux of the problem for Staying Alive is that it is incredibly silly. Like no holds barred silly ass shit. Siskel must have been so disappointed! They really turn their back on pretty much everything the first (very good) movie was all about. He heads into the city at the end of that film (a pretty depressing film at that) because he knows his unserious life can’t last forever. Sure he’s hot shit in one club in Brooklyn, but at the end he’s given a trophy he doesn’t deserve because the judges are racist and it’s a moment of devastation. Just glaringly obvious that this stuff he’s been working on is meaningless. He heads off to Manhattan to become… a super silly Broadway dancer? Lol, what? A perfect example of the unnecessary sequel that should have been abandoned immediately once it was clear that the breakout star from the first film was just too famous to make a sequel where his loser character was still a loser. His character had to be dope as shit. That sucks. One final note: Travolta is a good dancer… but he is not a Broadway dancer level dancer. Crazy choices all around. Bravo. As for what the plot should have been? Easy, he should have been living as the arm candy for a stable of rich Manhattan ladies. Taking them out dancing and stuff while doing some modelling and commercial work. Acting is ultimately where Tony ends up if he is to succeed.
Hot Take Clam Bake! This was all a dream. It was a dream he had maybe just before a cab ran him over in Manhattan. Dreaming that, despite struggling with his art, he is able to break through and take over a Broadway show and demonstrate to the world that he is actually The World’s Greatest Dancer. Because otherwise the entire concept of the film makes no sense and is built on a tower of lies. And this was written and directed by Sly Stallone… so that would be blasphemy to suggest. Hot Take Temperature: Satan’s Alley.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *gif of me dancing. Hard. On Broadway. Everyone is watching like “Holy shit that guy can dance … hard!”* Let’s go!
The Good? Travolta’s body man … he is in incredibly good shape. The dancing is pretty incredible, even though at a high level, would this be on Broadway? Like … would people watch this on Broadway? I think the answer is yes. As a matter of fact I think I could figure out that the answer is yes because I bet I can find ads in the New York Times for shows EXACTLY like the weirdo one they put on in the end where a dancer dances his way through Hell or whatever.
The Bad? The film is soooooooooooo boring. And Travolta as a character is sooooooo shitty. He was shitty in the first too, but at that point he was in a shitty situation, and trying to even figure out what it meant to not be in such a situation. Learning what ambition even means. In this though he kind of seems like a dick, and did I mention the film is incredibly dull?
The BMT? Nope. It is nice that we finally did it because it has a very bad Rotten Tomatoes score, and is one of the last Stallone films we needed. But it is boooooooooring.
So … continuing what I was doing last time, can Google Gemini grounded search get Rotten Tomatoes scores from imdb links more easily than just scraping? Last time it wouldn’t provide answers for more than 10 when given 100 films. So I chunked them into ground of 10 and … nope, still, it mostly cannot find anything below the top 50, and for all but the top ten it gets somewhat random results. So no, this is not something I can use in any way. It is very disappointing. I really thought it would work, and given how I tend to use Google (to get IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes links mostly) this was the first time I thought something could work that would be quite useful to my BMT work. Alas. It just isn’t ready for primetime.
This is a huge Setting as a Character (Where?) for NYC, just Broadway and Brooklyn all over this piece. I think that is it. Sure his dream of being a Broadway star could be considered a MacGuffin I suppose. And his inevitable rise to stardom is a twist of a kind. By naw, just the setting here. This movie is ultra-dull and is the epitome of Bad even if the director and its status as a legendarily bad sequel screams out to be good-bad, it just ain’t.
What can we learn about dancing … hard? Find out in the Quiz. Cheerios,
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