1980’s Can’t Stop The Music opens with Jack Morrell (young Steve Guttenberg) working in a record store.  However, he’s got bigger plans that just standing behind a cash register.  He quits his job and then roller skates around New York with a big goofy grin on his face.  Everyone he passes is charmed.  And why not?  New Yorkers are famous for their good-humor and polite manners.

Jack is a songwriter but he doesn’t have the voice necessary to sell his songs.  His platonic roommate, former supermodel Sam Simpson (Valerie Perrine), decides that what Jack needs is a band to sing his lyrics.  Luckily, Sam knows a singer named Felipe Rose.  He spends all of his time dressed like an Indian brave.  There’s no specific reason given for his costume choice, it’s just something that he does.  Sam and Jack are also able to recruit a construction worker (David Hodo), a “leatherman” (Glenn Hughes), a cowboy (Randy Jones), a G.I. (Alex Briley), and a singing cop (Ray Simpson).  The name of the band?  The Village People!

Yes, Can’t Stop The Music is fictionalized story of how The Village People came together.  It was directed by TV actress Nancy Walker.  It was a major studio production, one that was expected to build on the popularity of disco and bring in a lot of money.  Unfortunately, it was released at the same moment that disco stopped being trendy.  Can’t Stop The Music has a reputation for being bad and campy.  Both of those things are true but I should point out that it’s also a remarkably boring film.  The movie is full of characters who are constantly coming and going.  Sam has a large collection of friends and former co-workers, all of whom just tend to randomly pop up.  Most of them don’t really add much to the overall plot and, indeed, it’s hard not to resent being expected to keep track of all of them when there’s really no reason for many of them to be in the film.  A pre-transition Caitlyn Jenner plays Ron White, a lawyer who is mugged while delivering a cake and who ends up as Sam’s boyfriend.  As much as I made fun of Jenner as a performer while reviewing CHiPs, Jenner is even worse in You Can’t Stop The Music.  In fact, Jenner’s performance is one of the worst that I have ever seen.  If Ron angry?  Is Ron sad?  Is Ron in love?  Is Ron an alien from outer space?  You never really can tell, largely because Caitlyn Jenner’s performance is so inept.  It’s not so much that Jenner can’t show emotion and one gets the feeling that Jenner isn’t even sure what emotion is.

As for the Village People themselves …. well, this film leaves little doubt that none of them were professional actors.  Felipe Rose probably comes the closest to giving a credible performance but, as individuals, the members of the Village People aren’t that interesting and it takes forever for them to actually become a group.  Even after they become a group, they still can’t generate enough on-screen charisma to really hold our attention.  Who knew the Village People were so boring?

The majority of the film plays coy as far as the subtext of the Village People’s song are concerned.  Steve Guttenberg’s character is definitely gay-coded without the film actually coming out and saying so..  The construction worker gets a fantasy in which he imagines being lusted after by several female groupies.  The first few performances of the Village People are rather bland and it’s almost as if the film is trying to avoid the fact that the Village People’s songs and the personas of the performers all paid tribute to gay culture in the 1970s.  But then the film hits the YMCA production number and suddenly, the Village People are frolicking with half-naked, muscular men while joyfully singing about everything that’s available at the YMCA.  For that brief moment, the film embraces the campiness of the Village People and this major studio production actually becomes a bit subversive.  It’s also one of the few moments in the film in which anyone seems to be genuinely happy.  The Village People seem to be having fun.  Unfortunately, the YMCA sequence is the exception instead of the rule.

Can’t Stop The Music‘s sin isn’t that it’s boring as much as it’s just bland.  It’s an incredibly blah film.  No film about New York in the 70s has any right to be so forgettable.