Staying Alive (1983) * *

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone

Starring:  John Travolta, Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Julie Bovasso

Staying Alive continues Tony Manero's story as the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, but it is so disconnected (apart from one scene) from the original that Travolta simply could've played a different guy who is struggling to become a Broadway show dancer.    The movie is slick and full of music sequences that could easily have been repackaged as MTV videos (back when MTV played such things), but it lacks intensity, wit, and purpose.      Saturday Night Fever was a great movie, full of energy and teeming with universal themes which many could relate to.     Staying Alive reminded me of 1980's Headin' For Broadway, also about people struggling to become Broadway dancers.    This film could've been called Headin' For Broadway II and few would've noticed the difference.

Staying Alive picks up roughly six years after Saturday Night Fever ended.    Tony now lives in Manhattan in a fleabag hotel and works as a waiter, while going on auditions to be a Broadway dancer.   He is in a quasi-relationship with Jackie (Rhodes), another dancer who supports Tony and loves him.   Tony, however, catches the eye of Laura (Hughes), a rich dancer who uses Tony for a one-night stand and kicks him to the curb.     This causes some friction between Jackie and Tony, but Jackie never wavers in her love for him.  She is so patient with him that after she witnesses him kissing Laura later, Tony is able to brush it off with, "It don't mean nothin'" and it is left at that.

Tony is cast as a backup dancer in a Broadway show called, "Satan's Alley", which stars Laura as the female lead.    The male lead doesn't cut it, so the hard-ass director casts Tony in the lead because He Sees Something In Him.    The show goes on, Tony triumphs, and then he struts his stuff in Times Square with "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees booming on the soundtrack.    We see Tony walk the walk as he did in the first film, but this one is a desperate attempt to connect to the classic scene.    

The only other returning cast member from Saturday Night Fever is Tony's mom (Bovasso), who calls bullshit on Tony during a visit to the old neighborhood when he apologizes for his "attitude" when he lived there.   She replies, "Your 'attitude' is what got you out of this house."   Sadly, Tony's mom now seems to live alone.  I would've loved a cameo by his father chastising him about something, but alas it was not to be.  There is a brief shot of the 2001 Odyssey club, the disco where Tony once ruled and is now a gay night club.    

Was Staying Alive even necessary?    Sure it did well at the box office and produced an Oscar-nominated hit song by Frank Stallone (Far From Over), but other than Tony and the title song, the film has little in common with its predecessor.     This film was made more with dollar signs in mind than actually continuing Tony's journey toward respectability.     The play "Satan's Alley" itself is such a mish mosh of smoke, lasers, indistinguishable action, creepy music, and ugly set design (not to mention with no semblance of a plot) that audiences wouldn't have been cheering for it, but heading for the exits before intermission.