Friday, October 30, 2015

The Review: Staying Alive & Hairspray


Last night Cam and I did a double feature with Chipotle for dinner, beer, and cookies for dessert because we're grown ass people and can do things like that. It had been a long time since we had and we watched two movies she loved and I had never seen. The first was Staying Alive. I had seen Saturday Night Fever for the first time three years ago and the only thing I knew about this movie was the weird ass outfit he wore for some reason. This is six years after the previous film and was written, produced, and directed by Sylvester Stallone. What?! I had no idea. When I say I got into movies blind I mean it.


John Travolta is back as Tony Manero. He is in Manhattan now and lives in what looks like an open door jail while having a bunch of jobs at once. He is a dance instructor which they show for a moment and a waiter where woman that look like The Misfits hit on him. He has a fuck buddy named Jackie that puts up with copious amounts of his bullshit. If I thought he was a dick in the first film he has evolved into an asshole into the second. He ends up on a Broadway show where she is and meeting this other chick that is very toothy named Laura.


He ends up having sex with her and gets mad when she treats him the way he treats every woman. Then Jackie gets mad because she loves Tony but he is a manwhore. He heads back to his home which is super empty now and his mother reminds him that he is just an asshole and to accept it. He does and dances his heart out! This movie was good. I laughed my ass off at 80's bodies and the musical styling of Frank Stallone. Man, if you love his music you will love this film. By the way, we ended up watching this movie after seeing one of the other actors in an episode of Murder She Wrote. This is how Cam and I roll.


The next movie was Hairspray which I thought was a film actually made in the 60's. It wasn't. I knew nothing about this except it was a musical at some point which made me think this movie was as well. It was not but featured a lot of cool songs from 1962 specifically. Ricki Lake is in this at all her big glory as Tracy Turnblad. She and her friend Penny Pingleton played by Leslie Ann Powers who has dropped from the face of the Earth love this dance program called The Corny Collins Show. She heads there, auditions, and is a featured dancer.


Divine played her mother and Jerry Stiller is her dad which makes close to no sense but it works for some reason. This was like Dirty Dancing in that I had no idea that serious social issues would pop up. Tracy wants Black people to be able to join them on the show but the network is like “Nope!” There was this one Black chick Cam and I both agreed wasn't Black acting enough to stand up for Black rights and danced too bad to be with the Black people. It was sad. This was a fun movie and I imagine the musical would be fun to watch as well. I had a really fun night and look forward to doing it again.

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