(1980/AFD)
Rave Reviews
“Undeniably the absolute worst musical in film history!”
—Ned Daigle, BadMovieNight.com
“With regard to character, plot, and dialogue, Can’t Stop the Music … is too campy to describe … it’s priceless kitsch.”
—Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weakly
“Both awful and immensely enjoyable—the ideal party movie!”
—Wade Major, Box Office magazine
Plot, What Plot? The enormous and largely unexpected success of Grease in 1978 may be responsible for more bad 1980s movies than any other film. As the producer of Grease, elfin entrepreneur Allan Carr was able to mount several Worst Picture contenders over the next five years. But few of them achieved the status of legendary awfulness now accorded Can’t Stop the Music, the film that not only “won” our first ever Worst Picture ack-olade, but helped inspire the entire idea of the Razzies in the first place.
In 1978, when the deal for this film was being negotiated, the Village People were America’s disco darlings, a sextet of gay stereotypes whose string of hits included “Macho Man,” “In the Navy,” and their signature tune, “Y.M.C.A.” But disco was to die a swift and merciless death before Can’t Stop and its equally awful evil twin, Xanadu, ever hit theatres. Sold as “the movie musical event of the ’80s,” and produced at an estimated cost of $20 million, Can’t Stop proved instead to be one of the most miserable financial events of the ’80s, grossing a humiliating $2 million before becoming one of the first quick-to-video titles in Hollywood history.
Based on the “true” story of how the Village People came about, Can’t Stop is basically a reworking of those old Mickey-and-Judy MGM musicals, in this case a boys-meet-boys version. Standing in for Jacques Morali (the Village People’s founder who’s credited as coproducer of the film) is a very young, very dorky (but not very endearing) Steve Guttenberg as “Jack Morel.” By day he works in a giant New York record emporium, but by night he and roomie Samantha (sexy but slutty Valerie Perrine) conspire on ways to get Jack’s songs heard by a public that yearns to dance to tunes like “Magic Night.” Batting around ideas while throwing a lasagna singalong party one night (yes, the Razzie-“winning” screenplay is that hokey!), Jack and Sam hit on the idea of holding open auditions in Greenwich Village. Among the contestants who answer the call of booty are a leather biker man, a blond construction worker, a black cop, a soldier, a sequined cowboy, and a scantily clad Indian in full-feathered regalia.
Now that they’ve got their “group,” it’s time to record their first song, “Liberation,” a paean to Gay Lib in the days before AIDS existed. Like the film itself, their first recording session is a total disaster. So the meat of the film deals with Perrine’s efforts to get “Marakesh Records” executive Paul Sand to sign the boys to a contract, and aging publicist Tammy Grimes’s efforts to get Perrine and the Village People to agree to do a commercial for milk. Along the way, the VP sing such “original” tunes as “I Love You to Death,” “Samantha,” and, in the film’s high-camp highlight, “Y.M.C.A.” This number, staged in the steam rooms, locker rooms, swimming pools, and hot tubs of a men’s gym, combines elements of old Esther Williams pictures, Rocky, Lonely Lady, and countless other tacky movies to create an eye-popping, mind-boggling sequence that is the epitome of 1980s tastelessness.
By film’s end, the Village People are set to debut in concert in San Francisco with the Ritchie Family as their opening act. Backstage, Guttenberg rallies his traipsing troops with the announcement, “Hey, guys—we’re a group!”They then take to the stage in glitter-glommed versions of their each-one-a-gay-cliché costumes for what feels like a 19-minute dance remix/reprise of the film’s Razzie-nominated title tune, “(You) Can’t Stop the Music.”
Now that it’s on DVD and you can skip and jump through the boring stretches (namely, anything with 1980 Worst Actor nominee Bruce Jenner as a “square” lawyer courting Perrine), Can’t Stop the Music is almost as enjoyable as its double-feature-mate that co-inspired the Razzies, Xanadu.
Dippy Dialogue
Jack (Steven Guttenberg), to Samantha (Valerie Perrine): “Anyone who can swallow two Sno Balls and a Ding Dong shouldn’t have any problem with pride.”
Choice Chapter Stop
Chapter 16 (“Y.M.C.A.”): The Village People’s signature song. (Try freeze-framing at 1:16:00 to spot both of Perrine’s nipples clearly in view.)
(Samantha Simpson); Bruce Jenner 
by Bronte Woodard and Allan Carr