Stars:
John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, and Steve Inwood
Writers:
Sylvester Stallone and Norman Wexler
Based
Upon Characters Created By: Nik Cohn
Director:
Sylvester Stallone
Feature
length: 96 minutes
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Surround Sound, and French
Language Dolby Stereo Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions And Closed Captions And Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Amaray Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 17
Sound:
Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Surround Sound, and Dolby Stereo Sound
Year
of Theatrical Release: 1983/DVD Release: 2002
Theatrical
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Home
Video Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: PG
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
Five
years have passed since Tony Manero (John Travolta) moved out of Brooklyn with
aspirations of becoming a dancer. Now he lives in a Chelsea hotel and serves
drinks to the next generation of Manhattan club hoppers by night while juggling
dance lessons and trying to get a Broadway dance gig by day. While Tony was the
big shot in Brooklyn, here is just another struggling dancer looking for a
break, which comes in the form of a conceited dancer turned casual love interest
as well as a more down to Earth dancer, who is as much a friend to Tony as she
is a lover. Who will Tony choose when he gets his big break as the male lead in
a Broadway dance show where both women costar?
“Staying Alive” touches upon many of the story points of “Saturday Night Fever” and inverts them so we follow Tony in a world where he’s not the top guy from the neighborhood and he is still tackling various dead end jobs trying to survive on his own. We even get an introspective sequence that mirrors Tony’s long subway ride into Manhattan at the end of “Saturday Night Fever,” only here he walks across the Brooklyn Bridge and eventually finds himself at his mother’s house apologizing for not appreciating her more when he was younger, and the film also closes with a strut to the Bee Gees’ “Staying Alive” the way the first film opened. There’s even a moment for Manero to comment about his head when a door is slammed in his face early on the feature.
Travolta
looks as if he was in the best physical shape of his life when he made this
movie and he slips back into the “Tony Manero” character like the way one
might slip into an old pair of jeans, but somewhere “Staying Alive” falls
short of being a good sequel to “Saturday Night Fever” and where “Staying
Alive” falls short is that the film does not have the ring of truth about it
the way “Saturday Night Fever” did. The drama in “Staying Alive” feels
more like a retread of the “Rocky” formula, which should be no surprise
since the film was co-written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, who has a
brief cameo in the film and whose brother provides the theme song for the
film’s opening credit sequence. The characters feel less genuine in “Staying
Alive” then they did in “Saturday Night Fever” and in some ways the
film’s closing strut feels tagged on just to appease the fans and as a result
comes off as being almost ridiculous.
Paramount
Home Entertainment presents “Staying Alive” on DVD in an anamorphic
widescreen (1.85:1) aspect ratio for the first time ever on home video. The
picture quality is fine though not quite as sharp as “Saturday Night Fever”
on DVD ironically enough with a new English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
mix, that is by all means a good 5.1 remix, but it doesn’t quite have the
vitality of the 5.1 audio mix on “Saturday Night Fever.” An English Dolby
Surround Soundtrack as well as a French Language Dolby Stereo Soundtrack is
included along with English Captions and Closed Captions for the hearing
impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles encoded as options, but no other extra
features. A few interviews and the trailer would have made the DVD as a total
package better and if Stallone was predisposed to doing his own feature length
audio commentary for this film, well I think the DVD would be priceless. As it
is it is a rental if you are in the mood to find out whatever happened to
“Tony Manero” and a keeper for those fans that must have this film to
complete their Travolta collection. The menus are standard interactive still
frames that are easy to navigate.
“Staying
Alive” is not included as a part of “The Travolta DVD Collection” or
“The DVD Dance Collection” even though the film is chock full of dance
numbers. “Staying Alive” is only sold separately, but will debut on DVD-Video
day and date with “Saturday Night Fever: 25Th Anniversary DVD
Edition” on Tuesday October 8, 2002 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2002 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
Read The Review Of "Saturday Night Fever: 25Th Anniversary DVD Edition"