The original writer of Saturday Night Fever Norman Wexler gets a co-writer credit for the sequel.
Staying Alive was directed and co-written by Sylvester Stallone. The story owes a debt to A Chorus Line. Some of the clunky dialogue and scenes are likely to be the fault of Stallone.
However Stallone also got John Travolta into shape. Here he looks like a dancer with rippling muscles.
The story has moved on six years. Tony Manero is trying to hit it big as a bit part player in Broadway. He gets a long list of rejections and struggles on with the support of his girlfriend.
An abrasive relationship with the star of a new Broadway show, Laura (Finola Hughes) has not gone unnoticed by its director. Tony might have a girlfriend but he hits on Laura if it might help his career.
Travolta presents an older Tony Manero but he is still immature, shallow and self centred. Manero has a rawness and streetwise that attracts the attention of the director of the new Broadway show.
The film is let down by a thin uninvolving plot and too many songs that just does not fit in with the film. Whereas those Bee Gees songs became classics in Saturday Night Fever, they just are forgettable here. I thought Vince DiCola's composition blended better.
The real low point was the opening night of the campy Broadway show 'Satan's Alley' that Manero gets a starring role opposite with Laura. Conceptually is should had been reworked, maybe something more disco themed.
Travolta understands Manero but the film felt too different from Saturday Night Fever. Staying Alive did well at the box office when it was released but it was critically lambasted. It was a big task for it to even equal the original's success which had entered public consciousness in a big way. Looking at the movie again it does fit in well with the MTV aesthetics of the 1980s but it lacks the grittiness.
