Saturday Night Fever - Movie Reviews

At its best, though, Saturday Night Fever gets at something deeply romantic: the need to move, to dance, and the need to be who you'd like to be. Nirvana is the dance; when the music stops, you return to being ordinary.

Full Review | Sep 18, 2023

Travolta’s signature dancing and the Bee Gee’s soundtrack epitomized the public’s general impression of the 1977 film, leaving its seedier elements either forgotten, suppressed, or conveniently ignored.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 3, 2023

Offers one of the best soundtracks in the history of movies, and a star-making performance by Travolta. But it's dark as hell- darker than you probably remember (45th anniversary)

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 27, 2022

Every so often a film comes around that seems to have its finger on the pulse of society and it makes such an impact that it changes pop culture. Saturday Night Fever was that film in the late 1970s.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 13, 2022

Director John Badham's melodramatic, out-dated, coming-of-age, Bee Gee's-saturated disco dance classic was a defining 70s dance film that was the biggest musical sensation and blockbuster of the late 1970's (from co-producer Robert Stigwood).

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Oct 12, 2022

Unfairly remembered in some quarters as a kitschy celebration of the disco era (no, that would be Thank God It's Friday), this is actually a hard-hitting drama with an Oscar-nominated performance by John Travolta.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 10, 2022

John Travolta is far better than any previous exposure would indicate; his Tony Manero is suitably tough and punkish, but there is also a warmth and vulnerability that make him very appealing.

Full Review | May 6, 2020

Leaving aside any social commentary that the film does not address, this Saturday night is not safe from reproducing well-known cliches. Despite its silly and happy ending, it leaves us with a frustrated and broken aftertaste. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 30, 2019

Most details of character and setting, finally, are reduced to simplistic icons, mingling with such over-emphasised bric-a-brac as posters of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Rocky and Al Pacino.

Full Review | Jan 8, 2018

Saturday Night Fever makes good moviemaking seem easy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 8, 2018

Not many movies are genuine cultural phenomena, and John Badham's Saturday Night Fever is without doubt one of the most memorable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 6, 2017

Contemptuous of the community it phonily purports to depict.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2016

Saturday Night Fever assaults you with a flagrantly foul-mouthed script and coarse viewpoint.

Full Review | Dec 21, 2015

This is one tough picture - bristling and raw, with an aggression more attuned to angry-young-man British kitchen sink dramas than Hollywood's quickie music-fad cash-ins.

Full Review | Sep 24, 2015

Saturday Night Fever is wonderfully honest and completely accurate when it comes to depicting that stagnant environment that keeps young people like Tony pinned down.

Full Review | Apr 7, 2015

Disco drama is not just daaancin' yeah!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 15, 2010

Saturday Night Fever's heart is actually in the right place. It's ears, though? That's another story.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 10, 2009

Today, it's like a kind of '70s jukebox that hasn't quite aged that well.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 7, 2009

A small, solid film, made with craft if not resonance.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2009