Good story, Not enough for a whole film

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Take a flash-in-the-pan disco act, an unknown Steve Gutenberg on amphetamines, and Rhoda's mom in the director's chair and what do you get? A recipe for disaster that everyone saw coming except Allan Carr."Can't Stop the Music" is another one of those can't-miss ideas that failed horribly and from the cheap and corny opening credits, it's easy to see why.Most of the acting is horrible; the standouts being Steve Gutenberg, Caitlyn Jenner (as Bruce), Marilyn Sokol, and Felipe Rose (the VP's Indian), but for entirely different reasons. Forgotten camp icons Tammy Grimes, Barbara Rush, and June Havoc dress and act so silly that you could recast them with drag queens and nobody would notice. Valerie Perrine, the female lead, gets lost in the shuffle.Gutenberg's performance is morbidly fascinating, especially when compared with his most famous roles. He plays Village People founder Jacques Morali (Americanized to "Jack Morell" here) as a hyperactive flake with delusions of grandeur who can't hold a job or sit still for five seconds yet is inexplicably allowed to stay rent-free with fashion model gal pal Samantha (Perrine).Jenner and Rose give hopelessly wooden performances. While Rose seems game, his delivery is flat, his expression rarely changes, and every ten minutes or so he gives this badly dubbed Indian call that's like nails on a chalkboard. Jenner appropriately plays stuffed shirt tax lawyer Ron White and looks visibly uncomfortable. The other Village People aren't much better, but Rose gets the most screen time so we get subjected to more of his "acting." Up next is Marilyn Sokol. While she isn't as bad, the script gives her lame entendres that even Mae West would find distasteful. Also someone should have advised her to wear a wig or change her hairstyle because she bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry from "Rocky Horror." Every time she came on screen I expected her to break out into "Sweet Transvestite" when I wasn't cringing at her sleazy one-liners.The movie's biggest failure is lack of lasting conflict. Every obstacle seems to be resolved in less than two minutes usually by introducing a character who just happens to have the solution. Altovise Davis serves as a walking deus-ex-machina, bringing in two of the future Village People off the street and wandering in and out of scenes like a fever dream. Perrine finds the others on an ice cream run and she also conveniently dated a record exec. Ron White's mother announces out of nowhere she can give the VP their big break in San Francisco when said record executive rebuffs them. When money gets tight, Perrine signs on to do a commercial. The whole movie is like this, which makes its two-hour runtime seem like an eternity.The script is also packed with failed humor. The movie thinks, among other things, that getting your finger stuck in a rotary dial, dropping a contact lens into a pan of lasagna, and dropping said scalding hot lasagna in someone's lap is funny. It also throws in a pointless "humor" scene where Grimes and a random woman attack each other with a loaf of bread just so the director can have a cameo.For a movie supposedly dealing with the music business, it knows surprisingly little about it. Jack can easily compose fully-produced demos with a complete string section despite using a keyboard and headphones. He also thinks DJing an original song one night will lead to instant stardom. He records the VP's first demo in his backyard. The VP perform choreography in full costume in a studio session while recording their parts at the same time! Even non-musical people are bound to notice it's so bad.Nancy Walker is a lousy director, and it's never more obvious than in the filming of the VP's concert finale. It starts with an all-female opening act that alternates from filming them fifty feet away to pointing the camera up the ladies' skirts. The VP get the same medium and wide shots mixed with closeups that cut out half the group. While Ray Simpson does his solo parts, the camera either focuses on the others or films him from behind. Is it any surprise she never directed again? Finally we come to the undeniable gay subtext. The movie tries to have it both ways, hiding it for middle America while pandering to VP's gay fanbase at the same time and the results are perplexing and often hilarious. Jack is weirdly asexual unlike his real-life homosexual counterpart and the VP are filmed flirting with female groupies and Sokol. Perrine flashes her boobs in the YMCA hot tub scene but given Walker's clumsy directing, it's hard to tell if this was deliberate.For the fanbase, Jenner wears a crop-top and Daisy Dukes for no reason at all in the lead up to the infamous YMCA sequence where young, muscular men are lovingly filmed swimming in speedos, wrestling, and baring their backsides, and occasional fronts, in the shower. The song "Liberation" is unapologetically a gay pride anthem. While comparatively tame, the fantasy song "I Love You to Death" also takes on a disturbing tone considering the upcoming AIDS epidemic.The music is fairly solid if a little formulaic. Morali reliably cranks out catchy disco tunes, though VP classics "Macho Man" and "In the Navy" are sadly absent. The only misses were the stuttering "Samantha" and "I Love You to Death" due to being uninspired, repetitive, and sung horribly.You have to wonder how anyone thought this would be a success. Disco was dead and even if it weren't, this movie is too shoddily made to be taken seriously. Nevertheless it makes an interesting time capsule for a bygone era and just how much you could push the boundaries of a PG film back in the day.

I think Xanadu is marginally worse, but that isn't saying much. Can't Stop the Music is a train wreck of a film, however like Xanadu I can't help laughing at the awfulness of it all. The music is quite decent I admit. But I cannot say the same for the rest of the film. The filming and choreography are unimaginative and messy, the story line is irrelevant, the dialogue is the epitome of unintentional cheesiness and the direction is absolutely wretched.Not to mention I had difficulty caring about any of the characters, and the acting fares little better. Tammy Grimes and June Havoc bring some much-needed kitsch to the proceedings, but we also have an unbearably obnoxious Steve Guttenberg, a bland Valerie Perrine and a wooden Bruce Jenner. The film is also overlong, and drags badly. So overall, while it was a train wreck and a chore to sit through mostly, there was some camp but somewhat entertaining value. 1/10 Bethany Cox

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This movie was backed by the company that I worked for. They talk about 10 million used to promote it----10 million perhaps of other peoples money not there's Ill bet. When the movie came out Allen Carr contacted us (Fotomat in St Louis) and misrepresented the movie to the point we backed it and we paid for the advertising to promote it---we backed it up to the point we saw we viewed the movie. How did it ever get a PG rating. After my knowledge of the "fibbing" on the promotion I would have to doubt the rest of the claims made by the movie itself. It really was the worst I had ever seen and my boss, A deacon at his church, was almost kicked out of the church when the members all showed up for the grand opening. Should be titled "Should Stop the Music"