STAYING ALIVE

year: 1983

cast: John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes
bad movie rating: ***1/2

This is not a John Travolta film. It belongs entirely to writer/director Sylvester Stallone, rehashing the Rocky storyline of a dimwitted diamond-in-the-rough Italian fighting to survive... only in this case it's a dancer, not a boxer, and unlike Rocky, it's a bad movie. Travolta fights to make it from his former struggling strutter to lead dancer in what's perhaps the gayest Broadway musical ever created (named "Satan's Alley," inspired by Sly's "Paradise Alley"). Playing the character he made famous in "Saturday Night Fever", our man's in great shape, but look too thin, gaunt, strung-out. He charms his way into the bed of a beautiful Broadway star (Finola Hughes) who turns the tables and plays him... and there's an overabundance of Travolta getting his just-deserts: the player being played, played to the hilt while he's using his pretty, gullible girlfriend (Cynthia Rhodes) who can't help but to love the handsome devil. Her love for him is even more annoying than his lust for the femme fatale. And eventually, of course, like Rocky, our hero ends up champion of a game he never thought he'd had a chance in to begin with. Overall, it's terrible fun. Terrible yet fun. Terrible. Fun. Terribly fun. 

PERFECT

title: PERFECT

year: 1986

cast: John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jann Wenner, Laraine Newman, Marilu Henner, Carly Simon, Doug Campbell

normal movie rating: ***

bad movie rating: *****

This movie is perfect. A lean (and somewhat strung-out looking) John Travolta is a writer for Rolling Stone magazine (you know, the one with 90% ads) perched on a controversial, and dangerous, story about a computer mogul accused of drug dealing, and in the meantime centers his periphrial (but soon to be full) attention on "Sports Connection" (i.e. "Sports Erection"), an exercise club/singles hangout where he falls for Jamie Lee Curtis, who runs the best darn aerobics class on earth, and... This movie is perfect. You just have to see it for yourself. Gay men pretending to be straight and straight men seeming oh so gay. Horrible music, hilariously addicting dialog, and Rolling Stone Magazine's Jann Wenner playing himself but with a different name and aware-of-the-camera bad acting that's beyond description. The eighties in all its wonderfully colorful, corny splendor and then some... It's all here, folks. And through the awesome stupidity you'll find yourself amazingly involved in the moronic, sweaty fun. Unfortunately, the last twenty minutes, when Travolta's first story reemerges, turning the neon fluff into courtroom melodrama, things peter out. But no matter, this is an airhead classic you can watch a million times; the epitome of what's called a "guilty pleasure".

BE COOL

title: BE COOL

year: 2005

cast: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, The Rock, Harvey Keitel, Vince Vaughan

rating: *1/2

For a movie that pokes fun at bad sequels and corporations, this is a bad sequel which is as corporate as can be. John Travolta returns as the ever-cool "Chili Palmer" and, unlike his turn in "Get Shorty" (perhaps his best performance ever), he's simply going through the motions. We get a budding love story with Uma Thurman for all those "Pulp Fiction" fans who wanted to see them hook up, and even a VERY FAMILIAR dance sequence to boot. The plot centers on the music industry as opposed to the movie industry, and there are no decent bad guys (Vince Vaughan as a "wigger" and Harvey Keitel are weak), no decent almost-bad-guys-who-turn-good (Cedric the Entertainer is even weaker), and the someone-is-in-the-house-because-they-purposely-left-the-TV-on, which was great in the original, is overused to the hilt. Attempts of mazy-double-crossings that Elmore Leonard (and Quentin Tarantino for that matter) do so well are all but col de sacs leading to dead ends. But I gotta give credit to The Rock. Although I am not a fan his turn as a gay bodyguard who wants to be an actor is the only decent character.