Technically, it stopped a musical career dead in its tracks

I had always heard about the disastrously bad movie Can't Stop the Music, co-starring the disco group The Village People, but had never been able to find it to watch it. Recently, I noticed that it's streaming on the Fawesome service, so I decided that I was going to sit down to watch it and see just how bad it really is.

The print, unfortunately, starts off both letterboxed and pillarboxed, which is a good sign that the opening credits were blocked for widescreen but the rest of the movie is going to be panned and scanned, which sure enough does happen. Steve Guttenberg, early in his career, plays Jack Morell, an obvious pseudonym for Jacques Morali, the music producer who founded the Village People. Jack works in a record store, but he has dreams of being a songwriter and a DJ, if only he could get a gig as a DJ or get someone to listen to his songs, just like Krush Groove. Finally, Jack does get a substitute gig at a hot discothèque, and quits his job to take his chance.

Meanwhile, Jack has a platonic friend in former commercial model Samantha (Valerie Perrine) who co-rents an apartment with him and tries to help him out in his career in any way she can. She's got an odd group of friends, including Felipe, who wears the male short shorts, an Indian headderss, and pretty much nothing else. Jack's song goes over well, and since Samantha knows people in the music industry from her modeling days, she gets him a chance to play his demo. Jack is going to need real singers to put it over, however. Thankfully for him, Felipe the "Indian" has a bunch of wacky friends who are all interested in singing and perform one of Jack's songs at a backyard party.

Showing up at the party to deliver a cake is lawyer Ron (Bruce Jenner before he became a freak), and Ron and Samantha become romantically involved. Ron being a lawyer, he may also be able to offer some help in getting a band together. But everybody is going to have to make sacrifices if they want their art to be successful. Will they be willing to do it? Well, we know that the Village People became successful and this movie is loosely based on the story of how they became successful, so we know that it's going to have a happy ending.

Unfortunately for all involved, however, the movie was released in 1980, ju as disco music was beginning to slow down and lose its popularity while what remained morphed into various other forms of dance music. The Village People shtick was becoming passé, and none of them can act. They're not helped by a thoroughly unoriginal story and terrible direction (by Nancy Walker of all people), with the result being a box office bomb.

That's a bit unfair, because the musical numbers are energetic if badly staged and filmed, and the movie winds up being a fun disaster for anybody who enjoys disco. It's not as spectacularly bad as The Apple, but it's still fun, and definitely worth one watch. Just don't expect anything good.