wow
“Can’t Stop the Music” is an inherently funny movie, yet that’s not exactly correct because it’s hard to even call it a movie at all. It claims to be about the formation of The Village People, done in the form of cheesy musical montages and really no adherence to logic, structure, or acting that rises above something you might see in a cereal commercial.
For its good points the film at least seems to know its flamboyantly kitschy roots and never takes itself too seriously. Now for the rest of it. Why even make this? This is a movie that leaves no reason for why we should root for anyone in it, why we should care, or even understand Disco’s cultural significance. In fact, Disco had become almost obsolete by the time the film was released. So much for its repeated claims that this would be the sound of the 80’s. That this movie was one of the founding reasons for formation of The Razzies just made me had to see it.
It stars Steve Guttenberg, in a performance so abysmally cheery it’s kind of amazing he found future success in this field. He plays Jack Morrell, a play of the Village People manager Jacques Morelli. Morrell is first seen quitting his record store job to pursue his passion of creating music. Exiting the store, he dance-rollerskates around New York City as the title credits play over a song that’s not even a Village People song, but rather something called “Sound of the City” which is so awful it makes the city sound like Sesame Street.
The film never brings up that Morrell may be gay but he does have a female roommate named Samantha (Valerie Perrine), a retired model he never hits on, so you be the judge. For some reason a latino man named Felipe dressed up like an Indian (played by the Indian from Village People) has a key to get into their apartment whenever he wants so this already seems like one of those wild, wacky living arrangement sitcoms.
Eventually Jack and Samantha get it into their heads that they’ll form a supergroup and Samantha will use her connections to make them famous. This apparently involved either randomly approaching people singing on the street (hey, a singing traffic cop!) or auditioning people with below average voices, but what does that matter when they had huge muscles and could easily rip away their clothing down to their briefs?
In one scene a man dressed up like a construction worker is approached and he mentions his love for singing. This leads to a baffling dream sequence in what looks like a factory, where he lip syncs, badly, while he and several scantily clad female dancers grind away on each other, metal something or others, ect. The logic here, I think, is that if you see someone dressed flamboyantly enough, that automatically makes them a great singer. Even stranger is that this random black lady who the movie never turns into a real character seems to just find these weirdos and bring them back to Jack-Samantha’s apartment. I guess the 80’s were a more trusting time.
But I guess when you’re dealing with The Village People, who really cares how weird or untalented they are. Not when the actual lyrics of some of their songs are even funnier, like in “Magic Night” when an actual line is “We can all come inside each other”. And I saw recently that one of the Village People hates the fact “YMCA” ever was considered a gay anthem. Yeah, why think that when this movie sports a musical montage of muscular, shirtless men swimming, doing gymnastics, and even doing dance-boxing while the song plays over them? And when it comes out that The Village People were never very good at choreography it might be the truest thing the movie has to say about the group. Watching their stiffly uncoordinated movements around backyards or in the studio, they seem like they’re just coming back from a long workout. Luckily the movie’s director Nancy Walker is smart enough to focus on their swaying crotches while they’re singing, dancing, or generally just being.