THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY: it's enough to turn you atheist

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY gives disco music a bad name.
Released in 1978, when the world was knee deep in great disco tunes, this film manages to avoid acknowledging almost all of them.

From the anemic, barely audible theme song over the opening titles, accompanied by a montage of 'typical' LA teenagers getting ready for Friday night, it's obvious that this is going to be little more than a feeble West Coast copy of the previous year's Brooklyn based blockbuster (and classic disco song drenched) 'Saturday Night Fever.'
Where SNF had an incredible soundtrack, strong storyline and a charismatic leading character who lives to dance, TGIF features a parade of bland, generic teenagers dancing to bland generic and anonymous disco tracks on a distinctly unmemorable Friday night at The Zoo, a disco in downtown Los Angeles.
There's two young guys out on the pull, two young girls hoping to be pulled, two even younger girls (including a pre-Doris from 'Fame' Valerie Landsburg) hoping their fake ID is good enough to get them in the joint so they can participate in the dance contest, an Hispanic guy dressed in leather who lives to dance, a straight-laced middle class couple taking a walk on the wild side (well, he is an accountant), Jeff Goldblum as the oily, lecherous and cadaverous disco owner, and Donna Summer as an aspiring disco diva who gets her big break singing the film's only decent song 'Last Dance.'
Throw in The Commodores making a guest appearance at the club, and acres of polyester, wing collar shirts and bell-bottom pants and the result is distinctly yawn-inducing.
Despite the proliferation of young people and (supposedly) multiple-beats-per-minute music the film
lacks any sense of energy or vibrancy. It's late 70s youth culture with the sound turned down to avoid annoying anyone.
What's really shocking is that two powerhouse music labels are responsible for this lethargic mess. THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY is a co-production of Casablanca Filmworks and Motown Productions. Casablanca was home to Donna Summer, Parliament, Village People, Georgio Moroder and KISS amongst others in the later 70s, while Motown had been a hit machine since the early 1960s yet both labels seemed reluctant (Summer and The Commodores aside) to use the film to showcase their artists. It's just another example of director Robert Klane's determination to ride the coattails of 'Saturday Night Fever' without understanding anything about what made that film such a smash hit.
Equally surprising is the willingness of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to acknowledge the existence of THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY despite it's solid gold awfulness, and award 'Last Dance' the Oscar for Best Song.
Rarely has a less deserving film been so honoured.

ALL THE YOUNG MEN: and one tired old Hollywood star

We are talking young young men here. In some cases practically prepubescent judging by their total lack of facial hair despite going several days without access to warm water, shaving cream and a badger's-hair brush.
Comedian Mort Sahl's character is the sole exception. He's got enough beard for all his fellow soldiers put together, even if it is of the Groucho Marx greasepaint mustache variety. But looking like a cartoon heavy has it's compensations because Sahl gets to do five minutes of his stand-up routine to his fellow Marines trapped in an unfeasibly well decorated Korean farmhouse and under attack from a seemingly endless wave of North Korean and Chinese troops during the Korean War.
Something tells me historically accuracy wasn't uppermost in the mind of Hall Bartlett when
he wrote, produced and directed this cheap looking war drama in 1960.
Jumping on a bandwagon or three would seem to have been more of a primary motive, not only pandering to the audiences turned on by Sahl's biting satire and teen heart-throb co-star James Darren's good looks and limited singing ability, but also the growing number of liberals raising their voices against the evils of racism and segregation in American society.
Sidney Poitier is not only the sole African American in the unit but he's left in command when the Lieutenant is killed in an enemy attack. That doesn't go down well with some of the men who can't stomach the idea of taking orders from a Black man. Nor does it sit well with the unit's other Sergeant, Kincaid (played by Alan Ladd), who's older, more experienced - and white.

Kincaid's not a racist - after all you can't have the star spouting the N word even if it for dramatic effect - but he doesn't do anything to discipline the hatemongers. It's a conflict the film chooses to ignore in favour of simplistic posturing by both sides which does nothing to promote serious consideration of the issues.
Kincaid's a challenging character to read. There's a lack of consistency in his response to the various situations he finds himself in, but I suspect that's more down to Bartlett's poor writing than an intriguing complexity in Kincaid's personality. ALL THE YOUNG MEN is not Ladd's finest hour. He looks old, tired and puffy and does little to suggest the confidence that the men put in him is well placed.
Ladd's performance is not helped by some spectacularly sloppy editing. Shots don't match and in several instances multiple seconds worth of action has been snipped out of a scene causing characters to morph from one side of a room to the other without any visible movement.
It all adds up to a tiresome and banal experience devoid of any real points of interest. This is not a film anyone involved in it can be proud of and - in some cases (mentioning no names Mr Bartlett) - should be pretty embarrassed about.