Can't Stop The Music (1980)
Can't Stop the Music was made by Allan Carr, who was
also responsible for the mega-musical Grease, as a vehicle
for the promotion of the Village People. It's a vibrant and
uplifting musical . . . and probably the longest and most
expensive television commercial ever made.
Idolised and applauded by children and adults of every age,
language and cultural background (without the vaguest idea what
they were singing about in gay pride songs like YMCA) the
Village People cleverly fingered the pulse of a society immersed
in rapidly changing values and made it dance along to a disco
beat.
The people who made Can't Stop The Music cleverly
incorporated many of the production values of the old MGM musicals
and brought them up to date in a glittering package for the
disco-centric demands of a contemporary society. The result is a
revolutionary kind of musical that explodes on the screen -
Whatever else you think of the movie, you certainly won't be bored
by the musical numbers.
The Village People can't act, but they are in excellent company
here, since nobody else bothers to do much acting, either. Valerie
Payne is in hot water the minute she tries to make something out
of her role as a retired fashion model who plays den mother to the
good-natured lunatics in her Greenwich Village neighbourhood.
Steve Guttenberg is her appealing house-sitting roommate who
writes rock songs, the Village People are assorted characters
recruited from various street comers to audition his songs for
record mogul Paul Sand, and Bruce Jenner is a stuffy tax lawyer
who gets involved in the madness when he delivers a cake.
Wafting in and out of all the imbecilic confusion are such
grand old pros as Tammy Grimes, as an aggressive agent in the
Eileen Ford mould who gets her false fingernails caught in the
dials of phone booths trying to talk Valerie into a milk
commercial; June Havoc, as Guttenberg's mother - who uses her
training as a former chorus girl to outsmart record moguls in
contractual negotiations - and Barbara Rush as a rich society
matron whose enthusiasm for the kinky kids provides them with a
launching pad to stardom in the form of a charity show in San
Francisco.
The kids who revelled in the gyrations of the Village People
didn't seem to get the homosexual implications in everything the
group (and the movie) stood for. They responded to the Village
People the way they responded to Pee Wee Herman as grownups who
dress up in their fantasies the way children do at birthday
parties.
They didn't really have a clue what the big spectacular YMCA
number was all about, with its quick shots of male full-frontal
nudity as Valerie Perrine dances through the showers. Every gay centrefold
from Blueboy and Playgirl seems to have been
recruited for this number, and on the day it was filmed every gay
bar on Santa Monica Boulevard must have been empty.
Did the kids understand what's happening when Bruce Jenner
attacks Valerie Perrine for hanging out with guys who are
"weird," and she counters with "There's not a
person alive without peculiarities and as long as they don't hurt
anybody, it's none of my business"? Probably not. And later,
when Jenner discards his three piece Bamey's suit and dances down
Christopher Street in cut-offs to symbolise his own liberation,
nine-year-olds still squealed with glee.
 Frankly, none of this matters if you can break down your own
uptight defences the way Jenner does and let Can't Stop the
Music wash over you.
It doesn't matter how hip you are to the
gay scene to get the implicit humour in the Village People's
dressing room when the leather man gets an attack of nerves and
says "Leather men don't cry" and the cowboy, in an aside
to the audience says, "Oh, yes they do!".
It doesn't much matter, either, if you don't know the Steve
Guttenberg character is based on Paul Jabara, or the Paul Sand
character is a combination of David Geffen and Neil Bogart. It's
the spirit that counts, and Can't Stop the Music is loaded
with it.
From the wonderful opening number (David London singing The
Sound of the City) to the star-spangled finale, the music
lifts you off your feet and keeps you moving. The choreography, by
Arlene Phillips, is hot, the costumes sizzle, the photography by
Bill Butler is eye-poppingly lush, the direction by Nancy Walker
is as corny and awful and perfectly suited to the film's dopiness
as all the stuff she learned in the old MGM days.
The yield is a purée of Technicolor musicals that combines the
best of Busby Berkeley with the best of contemporary musical
ideas. Perpetual motion is what Can't Stop the Music is all
about. It's a glorious mess, but its feet never stop dancing.
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