The Last Days of Disco Movie Review

I've been a fan of Whit Stillman since his first film, Metropolitan, in 1990. It was therefore with no small amount of anticipation that I journeyed to see his third film, The Last Days of Disco.

Of course, when I get worked up over a movie, I'm always disappointed. Sadly, Disco was no exception.

Once again, Stillman focuses his story on the minutiae of the daily lives of yuppies (and yuppie wannabes) who are generally unlikable. This worked quite well in Metropolitan and Barcelona, mainly because in each of those pictures there was a central character who defied his surroundings and managed to break free of the mold, or at least put up a good fight.

In Disco there is not. In fact, in Stillman's third picture, there's not much holding the characters together at all, outside of a love for disco music. Even the most promising characters turn out to be shallow and often hateful, their stories meander interminably, and there's not even much in the way of overall plot development, except for the final end of that funky disco music.

A lot of Disco, just like its namesake, is played for the kitsch factor, and maybe I'm just too young to reminisce about 1980. The film also suffers without Stillman-regular Taylor Nichols to save the day (although Nichols appears, along with a dozen other alumni, in a cameo).

This isn't to say that the film doesn't have its moments of comedic or thought-provoking power. The brightest spot, a deconstructionist look at Lady and the Tramp (remember The Graduate story in Barcelona?), is almost worth the $7.50 it cost to see the film.

But not quite.