What is it about Australia and campy musicals? I see the IMDb lists the gross for this film as just $2m...well let me tell you all, about $1,999,990 came from Australia. In 1980 this film was a gigantic box office smash and ran for 6 months! The Village People came here for the Gala Premiere at the beautiful (lost) Paramount Theatre in George St Sydney (and then to the rest of the country) and the entire population went to see it. I kid you not...it literally ran months everywhere across Australia. Parents took their kids to see it over and over....until XANADU came out...then we all went to that 55 times as well. Last night, March 8th 2005, I saw the Village People in person, In Sydney, at an indoor concrete arena, as the support act to CHER who is touring here on a some endless farewell tour. What a demented double act! There were 12,000 other idiots in the audience (most over 50) all chanting YMCA etc to music....The Village People's tired act of high school level warbling and tinny disco (they sang to a tape!!!!) and limp 'moves' can only be described as..well...flaccid. They played for 25 minutes in a gargly medley of all the horrible songs from this film, so loved and memorised by seemingly every Australian. At one encore (don't ask) the cowboy (not the one in the film either, dunno where HE was) admitted they had been together 28 years but had toured Australia 33 times. That sort of says it all, doesn't it! Anyway they are all so old now, and so exhausted, they need to call themselves The Retirement Village People. Felipe Rose, the Indian, is SO overweight he just looked like Ernest Borgnine with turkey feathers. The Cop and The Army dude were the right ones so was and the Construction Worker who had vocal 'parkinsons'. So I watched the DVD again (every home here has one) and roared with shuddering delight at the glitzy awfulness of it all. On TV now they repeat some Gym scenes over the nudity in the shower scenes but the DVD is there for all to see. Steve Guttenberg is like Mickey Mouse after 15 cups of coffee. Unforgettable, as was the concert.
