Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg), an aspiring composer and DJ, wants to break into the music industry. His roommate Samantha (Valerie Perrine), a former model, helps organize a showcase to promote Jack’s songs. They gather a diverse group of performers—construction worker, cowboy, cop, Native American, biker, and soldier—who become the Village People. Samantha’s love interest, Ron, a conservative lawyer (played by Bruce Jenner), reluctantly gets involved in their wild world of disco. All this leads to a wretched let’s-put-on-a-show finale.
BEWARE! THERE IS NO CAMP HERE. JUST BOREDOM. UTTER BOREDOM
I WILL NEVER GET THIS TIME BACK AGAIN
Directed by Nancy Walker and produced by flamboyant impresario Allan Carr, Can’t Stop the Music was conceived as a glittering disco extravaganza and a fictionalized origin story of the Village People. Instead, it arrived already dated, collapsing at the box office in spectacular fashion.
The irony is that the Village People themselves barely register. The film sidelines them in favor of three leads—Steve Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, and Bruce Jenner—who embody camp-adjacent “gay tropes” without the film ever daring to utter the word gay. This coy avoidance underscores the hypocrisy at the heart of the project: a movie built on queer-coded fantasy that refuses to acknowledge queerness outright.
But the film’s gravest offense isn’t its dishonesty—it’s its tedium. What should have been camp is instead a slog. The glitter never sparkles, the jokes never land, and the musical numbers drag on with numbing predictability. For a film that promised excess, it delivers only monotony.
In the end, Can’t Stop the Music isn’t outrageous or scandalous—it’s simply dull. Utterly, irredeemably boring. And that, for a supposed disco spectacle, is the ultimate betrayal.
The audience snoozes – we will never get this time back again!
