Soooo, you remember the Spice Girls movie? The one that’s just a series of random events with a barely coherent plot serving almost entirely as a vehicle for unrelated music videos full of weird costumes? And how it contains an entirely fictional story of the origin of the band? Yeah, so there’s one of those for the Village People.
Starring Bruce Jenner. No, really.
The film: Can’t Stop the Music (1980)
The premise: Bruce Jenner is a struggling composer who can’t sing. His retired supermodel housemate Samantha helps him put together a band of random dudes she knows, all of whom happen to have gimmicky costumes they wear in their regular goddamn lives, because I guess that’s a thing in the Village? Anyway, with some help from a vast cast of barely drawn characters, the band escalates its way through unrelated music videos and comedy sketches until they’re famous. That’s it. That’s the movie.
But oh my god, you guys, this movie is so bad. It’s amazing.
Why you should watch it: I don’t think I have ever watched a gayer film in my life. Aynd I mean that in the literal sense. This movie is 100%, unabashed, brazenly homosexual, spelled out in sequins and full nudity. Except the movie doesn’t know that it’s gay. No, really–not a single subplot in this movie involves homosexuality. In fact, they try to give the obviously incredibly gay characters straight relationships and it is SO OBVIOUSLY NOT GOING TO WORK. Oh my god I have never seen a film so unaware of itself.
The acting is also terrible, and the dancing is terrible, and the writing is terrible, and the costumes are bizarre and impractical (including the ones they wear in regular life), the premise makes no goddamn sense, and about 90% of the film has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. It’s just random sketch comedy. I shit you not–there is a scene in this movie where a random lady on the street hits one of the characters with a baguette, so that character steals the baguette and hits her back, and then they both just walk away and nothing else is ever said about it. THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS MOVIE???
The drinking game: Drink whenever a new person walks into the story without introduction and everyone treats them like they’ve been there the whole time. Also just drink whenever the musical numbers make you uncomfortable.
Bonus: Do a shot every time the dude in the Native costume offends you, twice when you hear his “war whoop.” You’ll know it when you hear it, but you won’t want to believe it.
Where it’s available: Netflix. Glorious, glorious Netflix.
Homosexually yours,
M.M. Jordahl
“Anyone who could swallow two Snowballs and a Ding Dong shouldn’t have any trouble with pride!” -Jack/Bruce Jenner
M.M. Jordahl 