Very Cool!!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Brilliant and touching

Trust me: this movie is whack, but I couldn't help but grinning and dancing a bit by the film's end.The musical "formation" of The Village People was a crazy mesh of many different characters (and I mean oddball crazy people) and absolutely offensive stereotypes. But, gosh darn it, I liked them anyways.I am somewhat unfamiliar with The Village People with the exception of said stereotypes and at least three songs I grew up with and, yeah, danced to…even in public. But, I knew of them and actually got to see them preform at a State Fair when they opened for a favorite band of mine growing up: The Monkees. They performed well, from what budget they were allotted on a State Fair stage and only opening for another band.But, I digress. What captured me during this crazy movie was the positivity. Well, the jokes, too. Some of the jokes actually did work and the characters including "Miss Tesch-mac-her!" and Commercial Agent Channing were a ton of fun to watch. Despite all the looney and completely unrealistic occurrences and coincidences, everyone remained so positive like they really wanted to perform and be here. (It's been reported that might not have been the case, but they could've fooled me.) Additionally, some of the music and segments did get me moving. Admittedly, I watched this for a bad-movie podcast called How Did This Get Made?, since they covered it recently. And I did think it was a complete mess at first – even stopping it about half-way through and giving up on it until the next day. But, the more I think about it, I unabashedly enjoyed it. Helps there was full-frontal male nudity in it even with a PG rating. Um, I digress, again. The movie is supposed to be a loose description of how the band, The Village People and its creative "genius" (Mom's words) got started. It's pure fantasy and simply can't be taken seriously.It's just for fun and if you liked The Village People and the many more actors in here, it's worth the trip.***Final thoughts: I really only had two disappointments. One: they didn't sing my favorite Village People song: Macho Man. Come to think of it, In The Navy was also not performed and though I like that song, too, Macho Man can stick in my head all day. And two: Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. He was simply not fun to watch. His character was all-over the place and a total buzz-kill. Yes, he was meant to be at first, but then he grew to be one of the gang and suddenly he was back to being a dick, so to speak.

I think Xanadu is marginally worse, but that isn't saying much. Can't Stop the Music is a train wreck of a film, however like Xanadu I can't help laughing at the awfulness of it all. The music is quite decent I admit. But I cannot say the same for the rest of the film. The filming and choreography are unimaginative and messy, the story line is irrelevant, the dialogue is the epitome of unintentional cheesiness and the direction is absolutely wretched.Not to mention I had difficulty caring about any of the characters, and the acting fares little better. Tammy Grimes and June Havoc bring some much-needed kitsch to the proceedings, but we also have an unbearably obnoxious Steve Guttenberg, a bland Valerie Perrine and a wooden Bruce Jenner. The film is also overlong, and drags badly. So overall, while it was a train wreck and a chore to sit through mostly, there was some camp but somewhat entertaining value. 1/10 Bethany Cox

One has to admit objectively that if you ignore the highly fictionalized plot, the script and the acting, there's a lot of fun to be had in 'CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC. The supposed story of hit disco group The Village people (blatantly, satirically "Hollywood cleaned up") was laughed off the screen when it first came out for picturing one of the most obviously successful (and successfully obvious) gay singing groups as having been brought together by their (literal) girlfriends.Yeah, right....and yet, there is all that music. It's actually pretty darned good in a disco ball meets Busby Berkley fashion.Producer Alan Carr, who effectively captured the cartoon style of the Broadway hit GREASE in a smash cartoon of a movie, gave Broadway, movie and TV comedienne Nancy Walker a chance to direct her first big budget Hollywood film in a day (not yet passed) when the number of major women directors could be counted on one hand - with several fingers left over. Sadly, the commercial fate of the film Carr wanted set the cause of women directors back another decade or two. The producer wanted a cartoon - it had worked with GREASE - and Walker gave him one - presumably trying to satirize the old movie bios (remember the factually ludicrous but musically satisfying NIGHT AND DAY or 'TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY?). They ignored the well known and reported facts of The Village People and expected their music to carry the film. Had they caught the peak of the group's vogue it might have worked, but the wave had already crested and the Post-Stonewall audience was ready to demand TRUTH, not obviously silly Hollywood myth.The only real ongoing sin of CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC is the continuing involvement of its lead, the presumably straight but 8trying to be "enlightened" Steve Guttenberg, in gay associated projects which he has managed to "clean up" with an almost CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC-like, arguably homophobic, distortion. Note how when the play P.S. YOUR CAT IS DEAD (a flawed but enjoyable novel and play by CHORUS LINE writer James Kirkwood about a supposedly straight actor who finds a gay burglar in his apartment on New year's Eve and ultimately reaches an improbable rapprochement with him) that had a modest Broadway run and a successful life in stock was finally filmed in 2002 with Guttenberg in the lead and directing, he managed to leach almost every visage of legitimate gay "threat" or "edge" out of the actual staging! It became another dishonest cartoon and lost most of the target audience which was eagerly anticipating it.In both CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC and P.S...., it just doesn't work when straight or closeted film makers try to play with "trendy" gay themes but can't bring themselves to do so honestly. It's also a recipe for commercial disaster on projects that could have offered so much honest entertainment for modern open audiences.What a pity. There's still a LOT of fun to be had here, but you do have to ignore a lot to get to it.

This movie was backed by the company that I worked for. They talk about 10 million used to promote it----10 million perhaps of other peoples money not there's Ill bet. When the movie came out Allen Carr contacted us (Fotomat in St Louis) and misrepresented the movie to the point we backed it and we paid for the advertising to promote it---we backed it up to the point we saw we viewed the movie. How did it ever get a PG rating. After my knowledge of the "fibbing" on the promotion I would have to doubt the rest of the claims made by the movie itself. It really was the worst I had ever seen and my boss, A deacon at his church, was almost kicked out of the church when the members all showed up for the grand opening. Should be titled "Should Stop the Music"