Staying Alive [PG]

Five years after burning up the dance floors in Brooklyn, Tony Manero has moved to Manhattan to further his dancing career. After doing audition after audition, he finally lands a job on a Broadway show in the chorus but then ascends to the lead. But it all goes pear-shaped when his personal life begins interfering and the fact that he’s dating Jackie in the chorus and Laura, the lead, doesn’t help. 

Written, produced, and directed Sylvester Stallone, Staying Alive is a fine follow-on to Saturday Night Fever, but ultimately a film that I found dull and challenging to get through. It’s a complete 180-degree to say that a vibrant and high-powered dance movie is dull, but there it is. Essentially the movie is an hour and a half of auditions, career ascension, and conflicting romances: big whoop, such groundbreaking stuff… 

Five years after burning up the dance floors in Brooklyn, Tony Manero has moved to Manhattan to further his dancing career. After doing audition after audition, he finally lands a job on a Broadway show in the chorus but then ascends to the lead. But it all goes pear-shaped when his personal life begins interfering and the fact that he’s dating Jackie in the chorus and Laura, the lead, doesn’t help. 

To give the writers their dues, once the personal and emotional journey of self-discovery came into the mix about three quarters of the way through the film, then it began to take a stronger shape and engage me a bit more. Up until then, everything was sort of wavering and mediocre: nothing but chitchat, gormless staring, and sweaty dancers. But when that journey of the self really comes forward, the movie really begins to find its feet as a film about a boy becoming a man. It’s all about change and growing up and, once that storyline took centre stage, that’s what helped the move save itself. 

I have to say that there were two moments that had me laughing and loving the movie: one was Stallone’s cameo, which I found highly entertaining as he says and does nothing, but they really drew attention to it by stopping the camera pan and having Stallone and Travolta eye each other off. And the other was at the very end when Travolta does the strut that made everyone fall in love with him at the very beginning of Saturday Night Fever. I was delighted by that. 

Starring John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Julie Bovasso, and Steve Inwood, Staying Alive was an alright movie, but not one that I would watch again. Packed with 80s outfits, high-powered dance routines, rocking music, drama, romance, and comedy, it’s a fine follow-on but not the greatest in cinematic history.