Boogie down, boll weevils, it’s Burl, here to review the latest disco dancetravaganza for all you funky herky-jerky fly-folk! Yes, in honour of its 45th birthday on May 18th, I recently watched an all-singing, all-dancing, Donna Summer-starring artifact of the late 70s, which, for those of us who missed it, really gives a taste of what that time and place must have been like! (I was technically alive and breathing then, I suppose, but, ha ha, I was just a little kid!) The picture I'm talking about goes by the simple and declarative title of Thank God It’s Friday!
It’s a plotless ensemble affair along the line of American Graffiti (it was no doubt sold as an American Graffiti for the disco age), or Drive-In, or Nashville, or any number of other such pictures! Everything revolves around a giant discotheque called The Zoo, owned and operated by Tony, who's played by none other than Jeff Goldblum, and whom we’ve all become familiar with from movies like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and Into the Night!
Our characters include an excitable DJ called Bobby Speed, broadcasting from his aerie not just to the club, but apparently to millions of listeners out in radioland! This night represents his big break, so if he doesn’t come across with a live performance from The Commodores, a voice on a speakerbox, which constantly berates him all night long, is going to see to it that he never DJs again! (And guess what – that voice belongs to none other than Al Fann from Parasite and Return to Horror High!) We also have a pair of high school girls who want to win the big dance contest so they can get enough money for tickets to a Kiss concert; a dancing leather-maniac called Marv played by Chick Vennera from Last Rites and McBain; and a chick duo that includes a fresh-faced Debra Winger, who might have come straight from Slumber Party ’57 to do this role!
And then there’s a couple called Sue and Dave, out celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary; and that’s funny, because I know a couple named Sue and Dave, and actually was at their wedding, and they in fact met at my wedding! Unlike the people I know, however, the Sue and Dave in the movie are real squares, man, real flat tires! Especially Dave, essayed by Mark Lonow from The Last Married Couple in America, who’s an accountant and gets dragged to the disco by his timidly adventure-seeking wife, played by Andrea Howard from Summer School! There she and her blonde feather-do nearly fall under Goldblum’s lecherous disco spell, while elsewhere in the labyrinthine club Dave is fed mind drugs by a pink-haired anachronism who ties Dave's tie around his head and renames him Bozunkis!
And there’s a banty fireplug called Gus, who is at the club to meet a blind date and behaves like an absolute jerk; a bewildered van driver hauling all of The Commodores’ gear, played by DeWayne Jesse, aka Otis Day from Animal House; and of course young Donna Summer, looking to prove herself as a singer at the club! And all of these stories alternate and entangle, and it’s not done badly either! The pacing is fine, the music absolutely constant, and there are regular interludes of seizure-inducing strobe effects! People sneak in the windows and get locked in the stairwell, and there are gags involving gay men and a trans woman, and thankfully these gags are not quite as phobic or mean-spirited as I would have expected – they mostly jibe with the general air of amiable acceptance found at The Zoo itself! Ha ha!
None of it is brilliant, but there’s decent pep, a few funny gags (and a lot of clangers too), and performances with energy and verve! I’m not myself a big disco fan, but I can certainly appreciate The Commodores, and it would have been a blast to see them play live in an environment like this! By the time the janitor is sweeping up confettis around the last lingering couple on the dance floor, you’ll feel like you yourself spent a night beneath the disco ball! And, ha ha, that’s not such a bad thing! I’m going to give Thank God It’s Friday two leather jackets and a handful of ‘ludes!
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