Can’t Stop the Music ** (1980, Valerie Perrine, Steve Guttenberg, The Village People) – Classic Movie Review 8957

Glenn Hughes (1950–2001),

Can’t Stop the Music prompted John Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards in 1980. It took the first Razzie award for Worst Picture, and also took Worst Screenplay.

The late Seventies gay stereotypes music group The Village People is given the accolade of a huge lumbering disco musical built round them.

Director Nancy Walker’s 1980 biographical comedy musical Can’t Stop the Music could have been a whole lot of fun, but, as it is taken straight, neither producer/ co-writer Allan Carr nor director Walker can start the music. Almost any other direction would have been fine: tacky, camp, playful, tongue-in-cheek or silly. But straight and serious equals boring. However, as a curio, and a timewarp, it is sort of some fun.

The Village People are recruited by New York model Samantha (Valerie Perrine) to promote aspiring composer Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg), a caricature of the group’s actual founder, Jacques Morali.

Can’t Stop the Music is a hilariously, rather endearingly, awful movie, and there is only a single exciting moment: the hit number ‘YMCA’ (music by Jacques Morali, lyrics by Henri Belolo and Victor Willis), brightly choreographed by Arlene Phillips, and pretty much irresistible. Their other biggest hits, ‘Macho Man’ and ‘In The Navy’, are not on the 1980 hit-track menu, though of course the catchy ‘Can’t Stop the Music’ (music by Jacques Morali, lyrics by Henri Belolo, Phil Hurtt, and Beauris Whitehead) is, and so is ‘Magic Night’, which does go to show that Steve Guttenberg can’t dance. Plus the terrible opening scene over the credits with Guttenberg skating all over New York, and the inept ‘Liberation’, which should have become a gay anthem but misses by miles, and, very peculiarly, the painful evergreen ‘Danny Boy’ sung by the late, great Glenn Hughes.

The Village People are Ray Simspon (Cop or Policeman), David Hodo (Construction Worker), Felipe Rose (Native American or ‘The Indian’), Randy Jones (‘The Cowboy’), Alex Briley (GI) and Glenn Hughes (Leatherman with handlebar moustache). The characters were stereotypical gay fantasy figures of the time hanging out in Greenwich Village.

Also in the cast are June Havoc, Barbara Rush, Leigh Taylor-Young, Caitlyn Jenner [Bruce Jenner], Paul Sand, Tammy Grimes, Altovise Davis, Marilyn Sokol, Russell Nype (as Bruce Jenner’s boss) and Jack Weston.

Allan Carr writes the screenplay with Bronte Woodard.

When the lavishly $20 million budgeted film tanked, it became Nancy Walker’s only theatrical feature film as director.

David Hodo recalled: ‘When I first read the script, I threw it across the room. I though it was a piece of crap. It read like one of those stupid old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney pictures. We didn’t believe in the movie, but no one would listen to us! You can only go on for so long being a joke.’ Indeed Carr described it as ‘pure entertainment in the great MGM musical tradition”. It was shot on two sound stages at MGM’s Culver City Studios, Los Angeles, the scene for many classic MGM musicals.

Olivia Newton-John turned down the lead role to do Xanadu (1980), which later played in a 99-cent double bill with Can’t Stop the Music, prompting John Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards in 1980. Can’t Stop the Music took the first Razzie award for Worst Picture, and also took Worst Screenplay.

Russell Nype, two-time Tony winner and star of Call Me Madam, died on 27 May 2018, aged 98.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8957

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