Nothing screams the disco era quite like the 1978 Academy Award winning (?) comedy THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY.
Filled with wall-to-wall disco music, it will either take you back or make you puke, depending on your personal experience of that era.
This is one of those seventies comedies where the writers throw together about twenty characters with one goal (a great Friday night at a huge LA Disco called "The Zoo") and hope something sticks.
A very young Jeff Goldblum stars as the owner of the club, obsessed with bedding a married woman there with her boring accountant husband. When her husband pulls a massive Radio Shack calculator out of his leisure suit, its a hint of the sophistication level of the writing. When he screams about the $2.50 cocktails, you WILL bust out laughing.
An even younger Debra Winger plays a clumsy girl in search of a nice guy, Donna Summer shows very little acting talent but plenty of singing talent as Nicole, a singer in search of her big break.
The Commodores appear near the end to sing a couple great songs from the era including "Too Hot Ta Trot" and it's the only film they ever appeared in.
Summer's disco anthem "Last Dance" won the Academy Award for best song in 1978, making this arguably one of the worst films ever to win an Oscar.
The writing is "Happy Days" level, and that might be incredibly unfair to Happy Days.
A few of the "laughs":
Goldblum parks his prized Porsche in the front spot in the parking lot and practically every car that comes to the club after that manages to hit the car. Clever laughs these aren't.
There's a dental assistant popping a ton of pills, a short young version of Archie Bunker on a mismatched date with a tall woman he berates for thirty minutes for no reason and the big laugh is when she punches him in the face.
Oh what a laugh fest....zzzzzzzzzzz.
The characters that aren't annoying are predictable and only WInger and Goldblum manage to emerge with any grace, which is why we've never seen any of these other people since.
Oh, and the Commodores are great. It's hard to remember Lionel Ritchie's hair this big and his outfits this chrome edged and shiny, but they are a great band that survived disco in style.
It's only 90 minutes, but I could only muster a "Thank God It's Over" 89 minutes in...harmless and dim-witted, this party gets a D.
Why not an F? Because the other late 70's disco flick, "Can't Stop the Music" with Bruce Jenner and the Village People only DREAMED of being this good and I needed a lower rating....
Comments