Tony Manero (John Travolta) is an uneducated, middle-class teenager in Brooklyn whose life is going nowhere. He works at a paint shop where he puts in minimal effort and lives for Saturday, the one night every week when he can go to the local disco. A loser outside the club, Tony becomes a god the minute he steps on the dance floor. Girls want him, guys want to be him... everything is great.
Things change the minute Stephanie (Karen Lynn-Gorney) steps on the floor and into Tony's life. She's the polar opposite of Tony and different than every other girl at the club. Tony is drawn to Stephanie and immediately struck with a dilemma. He wants to seduce Stephanie and sleep with her, however doing so would reduce her to the same level as the other girls in the club. This insight is enough to send Tony on a quest of self-discovery, setting him on the path to finally realizing his dream of getting out of Brooklyn.
When approached as a simple "dance movie," Saturday Night Fever is a blast. Disco may be long dead, but it is hard to watch the movie and not get into the moves. It wasn't enough to make me want to start dancing, but it lends energy to the film that is hard to ignore. This is in stark contrast to Tony's personal story, which is more stoic and self-introspective. Tony comes off as a worthless scrub early on, but reveals himself as a deep individual.
The Blu-ray release is light on extras, but here it is a matter of quality over quantity. First up is a nearly hour and a half-long documentary on the film, "Catching the Fever." The feature collects nearly everyone associated with the movie, except for John Travolta, and is a retrospective on the film that covers everything from a look back at the disco era to an instructional "Dance like Travolta" segment. Any information you don't get from the documentary is covered in Director John Badham's audio commentary. The commentary is great for aspiring filmmakers. Badham discusses the trials and tribulations involved with creating a low-budget film, including having to shoot around New York traffic or enhancing the look of the club with tin foil. It also reveals a few interesting bits of trivia... but I'll let you discover those for yourself.
Badham's commentary continues through a series of three deleted scenes. Finally a 70's disco trivia game rounds out the features. Rather than focus on the movie, the game is geared more towards the disco era, which I realized wasn't for me about three questions into the game. Thankfully, the rest of the package was. Though it may never escape the image of Travolta in a white suit, Saturday Night Fever is far more than one image.
