Never the camp monstrosity of Can't Stop The Music, the historical horrorshow of They Shoot Horses Don't They, the bowdlerized down 'n dirty drama of 54, or the half genius (the songs) half stupid (much of the rest of it) Xanadu, Thank God It's Friday has always been a film experienced more as a footnote than an actual film. It's a disco movie (the credits proclaim it a "Motown-Casablanca Production"), and what it does well is show the way that the disco is a Verdi-esque assembly hall for several stories and characters to flow through- a sort of coke-fueled Altman approach. Of course, there's barely even one gay character in the film, and that is a remarkably disingenuous portrait of disco as both phenomenon and public space. But it was the 70s, and so many other sins were thus allowed to slide.
There's a lot of good music here, including "Last Dance," which won the Oscar for songwriter Paul "It's Raining Men" Jabara, and several other Donna Summer tracks, and the new packaging for Sony's DVD of the film emphasizes Summer to the extent of omitting just about everything else. Since the film's egalitarian plot spread was what made it so intriguing, it's kind of frustrating that the distributor would jettison it in the pursuit of a quick Donna Summer cash-in.
La Summer is a lot of fun in the film, and it's very odd to see Jeff Goldblum and Debra Winger orbiting through the 4/4 thump of the film's universe. Little effort seems to have been put into the film's DVD, though Sony has released it at one of their lower price tiers. If you're looking for a diverting and fairly brainless disco romp, you could do a lot worse than this. But for just a hint of how the nightclub experience affects lives in a great film, check out Barbara Albert's 2004 film Böse Zellen (Free Radicals in the US) or David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
