Ryan's Journal

The problem with watching Saturday Night Fever, besides John Travolta and his hair, is getting The Bee Gees seemingly eternally young ballad Staying Alive eternally stuck in your head. I guess I can't dig on Travolta too much; some law of nature must dictate that you have to strut that way if you're listening to Staying Alive and Disco Inferno all the time.

Actually, the real problem was wondering whether the movie is a cleverly satirical slant on the decade of disco or an earnestly serious endeavor. Having grown up in a climate where "the 70's" was basically a punchline left me wondering often if I was supposed to be laughing or feeling some sort of pathos for the entirely remote cast of hoodlums.

I can only assume it was meant to be serious (see what Ebert has to say about Siskel's favorite film), what with the frequent disco montage showpieces (or maybe that's a strike against it), but I still feel like this was some sort of fantasy world with no grounding in reality. I'm sure some 90's babies will think my fascination with Back to the Future and Indiana Jones outdated and in bad taste. To each generation its own. At least the 70's gave us real Star Wars.