Can't Stop The Music

You can take my word for it - you are going to want to stop the music more than you want to stop your MIL from coming for a week-long visit with a list of everything that's wrong with you and how you keep your home.

This is a film that's very hard to watch sober. If you're going to try, you'll have to do some prep work ahead of time. I'm pretty experienced with dealing with authentically endless bullcrap in my daily life, so I just flipped that little hidden button in my brain to "gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhbsurdity time!"

Join me.

Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg) works in a frightfully bustling record store in NYC. He has a life or death situation wherein he needs to get off work on time - however it's inventory night, so he has no choice but to quit on the spot. He's so elated that he skates through the city, clutching a tiny tape player while jamming out liberally for the entirety of the opening credits - without getting punched in the face or hit by a vehicle even once.

Long before the completion of those credits, this movie has turned me into a gay man. I suppose I'm okay with it, I just didn't plan on becoming gay tonight, and I have absolutely nothing to wear for the occasion. This is embarrassing.

I almost forgot about Jack's emergent situation he was skating off to deal with! He's a composer, and he has a guest DJ gig that night! This is a solid life plan, because I heard that Mozart totally got those 18th century Austrian ballrooms crunk back when he was in his guest DJ phase.

The rad thing about the nightclub Jack is working for is that it's owned by a guy named Benny (Jack Weston) who's dressed like a sparkly English garden. Naturally, Jack's brought one of his compositions to play that evening, and the song was written for Samantha (Valerie Perrine), who lets Jack live with her rent free, and keep all his composing equipment set up in her front room just in case he has a composing emergency. Nothing in the history of the Universe - since the Big Bang - has had atoms as excited as Jack Morell. He's on the verge of exploding every single moment he's conscious.

Meanwhile, Samantha's a pretty cool chick, even if she does get a little frantic about a bit of spilled water on her carpet. She's your typical bohemian - has lots of houseplants, keeps her contact lenses in mustard and relish jars and just retired from fashion modeling. It's groovy she was able to continue working up until she was eligible for a senior citizens discount on coffee at McDonalds.

After hearing the 30th repetition of "Suh-suh-suh-suh-suh-suh-MANTHA!" playing in the club, she has no choice but to demand Jack put together a demo tape she can shop around to ex-lovers in the music business. Unfortunately, Jack just quit his lucrative job at the record shop, so he's too cash poor to hire singers and rent a studio. Darn.

Samantha solves this problem by going out for ice cream. Hear me out. This is magical ice cream. It morphs from chocolate top/vanilla bottom to vanilla top/chocolate bottom to full vanilla and then chocolate chip without significantly changing in volume or explaining itself. Along the way, she (Samantha, not the ice cream) runs into many fabulous, completely straight male friends, inviting them to a gingham-tableclothed lasagna-palooza in her back courtyard at 8pm. I honestly should have seen that coming.

One might think she'd forgotten she already had a date that evening with a tightly-wound lawyer named Ron (Bruce Jenner), but really all she's forgotten is to care when he shows up with a smashed cake after getting mugged in broad daylight on his way there by an old lady with a scooter.

So many interesting things happen at this back yard soiree: Samantha's ex-boss crashes the party to try to convince her to return to modeling to do a campaign for milk, and gets fed a contact lens. The Village People almost form, but there aren't quite enough of them. A horny woman named Lulu (Marilyn Sokol) has skinned Judy Garland and is wearing her like last season's Armani. Why wasn't I invited, seahorse sea hell? *re-adjusts gaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhbsurdity settings*

In the meantime, a whole buncha hijinks and happenings occur. Uptight lawyer Ron dons a half shirt and decides to join Samantha on her quest to make Jack Morell a superstar composer.

The Village People take their final form and Samantha returns to modeling, dragging them with her, and the group of them, along with every other struggling dancer in NYC put together the sparkliest, show-stoppingest, most sexually-charged ad for milk ever. Strangely, milk was not ready for this level of sensuality, and the ad sits on ice.

Jack and his mother Helen (June Havoc) hijack Sam's ex music producer Steve Waits' (Paul Sand) private plane and convince him to reconsider by stuffing him full of kreplach until he falls into a deep guilt-nap. To be fair, this is the most realistic moment of the film. Almost anything can be solved with a good dumpling coma.

So, naturally, everything works out and thank god for that. There's just one thing that niggles at me, from my 2013 perspective on this 1980 movie. The Village People are not depicted as openly gay - in fact, they are shown nearly humping everything female within reach. I suspect that if one were to attempt to be gayer than the Village People, something very disturbing would happen to the fabric of space and time - it couldn't be done without dire consequences. These are the gay icons.

Other than that, oh my god. This film is great, in that kind of way where when it's over, you feel like you've truly been through something, and can brag to your friends about the wounds you've received.