Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

That's what I said as the end titles rolled.This film is nothing more than a drawn out promotion of Donna Summer and The Commodores and a bunch of other contracted artists on the Casablanca and Motown record labels.What little there is of a plot is risible. The dialog is dreadfully amateurish and I pity the few name actors trying to work with it. Most of them simply phone in their lines.Andrea Parker makes the best of a bad lot.Leonard Maltin summed it up perfectly when he declared it to be 'perhaps the worst film ever to have won some kind of Academy Award'.Simply awful.

The setting: a single wild and eventful Friday night at a popular disco club. A motley assortment of folks converge at this dynamic hot spot for a happily swinging good time: Said folks include a couple of teenage girls who are eager to make the scene, a married couple out on a date, the club's sleazy womanizing heel owner, a sweet gal looking for Mr. Right, a merry Mexican-American who lives for dancing, an aspiring singer trying to get her first major break, and a hot-tempered fat jerk. Director Robert Klane, working from a busy script by Armyan Bernstein, ably juggles a bunch of disparate narrative threads which crisscross in all kinds of witty and entertaining ways. Moreover, Klane and Bernstein astutely peg the gaudy threads, thumping insanely groovy music, anything-goes hedonism, uninhibited excessive drug use, and sense of pure live-for-the-moment fun which were hallmarks of the 70's disco craze in a breezy and snappy way. The lively acting from the attractive and appealing cast rates as a real substantial plus, with stand-out contributions by Jeff Goldblum as conceited smarmball ladies' man Tony Di Marco, Debra Winger as the uptight Jennifer, Terri Nunn as spunky teenager Jeannie, Valerie Landsburg as Jeannie's gawky pal Frannie, Chick Vennera as passionate dancer Marv Gomez, Ray Vitte as hip DJ Bobby Speed, Mark Lonow as stuffed shirt accountant Dave, Andrea Howard as Dave's easygoing wife Sue, Robin Menken as the sassy Maddy, John Friedrich as the nerdy Ken, Paul Jabara as the klutzy Carl, Mews Small as the kooky Jackie, and Donna Summer as the determined Nicole Simms. Among the highlights are Vennera's exciting and exuberant impromptu parking lot solo dance, Summer belting out the glorious Oscar-winning disco smash "Last Dance," and the delightfully energetic big dance contest. James Crabe's glittery cinematography gives the film an appropriately garish look while the throbbing disco soundtrack certainly hits the hoppin' spot. Best of all, there's a joy, vibrancy, and infectiously good-natured carefree sensibility evident throughout that's impossible to either resist or dislike. An immensely enjoyable 70's time capsule.

Debra winger, Jeff Goldblum,the disco queens herself Donna Summer??That's right! You bet your sweet !!! LOL The new DVD has been digitally transferred to High Defenition!! It looks and Sounds GREAT !!Let's go back to Los Angeles 1978 ! Great soundtrack, Diana Ross, The Commodores, The Village People, Oscar winner songwriter for Last Dance Paul Jabara, Pattie Brooks, basically the entire Casablance label was featured in this film!This movie was rated PG, even tho it includes graphic drug use in many scenes, but back then I guess it was normal.I recommend this fun movie for a rainy Friday night!

THANK GOD IT'S Friday was released just as the disco craze crested, when anything and everything might happen during a night on the town, when sex was casual, and drink and drugs were still regarded in a lighthearted manner, and music wailed and blared with the likes of Gloria Gaynor and K.C. & the Sunshine Band. Within a few years Disco would be publicly declared dead--but it still lives on in the recordings... and in Donna Summer's screen image of the Disco Diva, shimmering in the spotlight beneath the mirror ball with a hibiscus tucked into her hair as she belts out her megaton hit, "Last Dance."TGIF is best regarded as a cultural artifact, an attempt to show everything that was shiny about the Disco world without any reference to its down sides of sexually transmitted diseases, next-morning-hangovers, and serious drug addictions. The story is slight: a disco is hosting a big dance contest, and every one arrives at the door with personal ambitions. There is, of course, the singer who hopes to hit it big; two underage teen girls hot to be Disco Queens; a sweet young thing who hates polyester and is looking for Mr. Right in the wrong place; and a ladykiller looking to score his next victim. The film is most memorable for the look of the disco, which is the real star of the film, and the cast, which includes several performers on their way up: Jeff Goldblum as the lady killer; Deborah Winger as the anti-polyester good girl; and of all people a very, very young Terri Nunn, who would later score big as the front singer for the band Berlin.There are all the usual running gags, and as a whole the film is only mildly entertaining. But then Donna Summer steps into the spotlight--and for a few moments everything that was magic about Disco lives and breathes again. For what it is--an incredibly light, mindless bit of tinsel--the film is well done, but it has an extremely limited appeal for a contemporary audience. Unless you were actually part of the disco scene and want to revisit old memories, you're better off catching it on the late-late show. But my oh my... wasn't Donna Summer something special!Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer