Saturday Night Fever

So you think it’s just John Travolta in that white suit throwing wild shapes on the dance floor? Think again. Misguided double bills with Grease only lead to confused audiences, because this is as perfect a slice of New York sleaze as anything Abel Ferrara pulled out of the sewer. Adapting Nik Cohn’s 1976 New Yorker article “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” director John Badham took a dive into the testosterone-fueled lives of twentysomethings in lateSeventies Brooklyn – all desperate to get laid, get in a fight, get noticed, get out. The Grammy-winning soundtrack may have made the Bee Gees the biggest band in the world, but Tony Manero (a deservedly Oscar-nominated Travolta) is more like a Bruce Springsteen antihero. – Richard Whittaker Read a full review of Saturday Night Fever.