The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Memorable, crazy movie

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

USA conversationalist Whit Stillman's third feature, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO trades on his personal experiences of NYC's disco-scene (salted with Harvard-disparaging quips) in the early 80s, ebulliently scrutinizing a coterie of freshly out-of-college yuppie-wannabes, who are habitually congregated in their common haunt, an unconscionably popular nightstand, meantime, their love life and career path wax and wane variably, signposted by its title when their disco days are unexpectedly being put paid to, time to grown up when reality bites. Alice (Sevigny), a self-contained sylph dithering about making the right decisions - don't be judgmental, be sexy, always at the bidding of her more popular but stuck-up friend Charlotte (a fresh-faced Beckinsale, looking ghastly under the slap), both girls work in the same publishing house and mingle with the likes of Tom (Leonard), a spiffy environmental lawyer, Jimmy (Astin), an enterprising adman, No.1 and No.2 prospects on Alice's infatuation list, then there are Josh (Keeslar), a young assistant district attorney and Des (Eigeman), a college-dropout who becomes one of the managers of the said nightclub, both take a fancy on the quiet but intelligent Alice.Gender study and sex politics are thrown into the mix where philandering and mendacity (using "gay excuse" to break off relationships), gender double standards (you are a titillating slut, I will not forfeit our chance of a one-night-stand, but afterwards, we are finished.), treacherous friendship (Beckingsale is totally in her wheelhouse as the paradigm of the so called "green tea bitch", avant la lettre), even venereal disease, collectively roil the dynamism of their pairing-off games, to somewhat wacky but consistently buoyant vibes, however, a byplay relative of an undercover police investigation is only patchily introduced as a frivolous plot device, fails to emphasize what is at stake, and the manic-depressive Josh, accorded with a forthright quirkiness and spontaneous elocution, potentially the most fascinating character among the posse, is wasted by the wooden, stilted performance from the blandly handsome Keeslar, whose recapitulation of the film's tenor near the finish-line comes off as a deleterious overkill.However, club-scene hasn't died out, has been continuing luring new generations of hipsters and scenesters with theme-specific variations to this day, over three decades later, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO is, to each their own, a sparkling eulogy of Whitman's own youthful abandon and disillusion, and on a sociological level, a zeitgeist-reflecting conversation piece that thankfully doesn't belie its maker's undue conceit and guile.

Disco died 40 odd years or so. Wilt Stillman's 'The Last Days of Disco' went public almost 20 years ago. If you remember the heady days of disco, Stillman's film is a pale ghost of those days. The real deals of the short life of disco that gay liberation and the drug culture and the turning of society's back on the long war in Vietnam, the mean days of Nixon and the fear that the best days of America had gone away. In way, Don McLean's 'American Pie' says it all in a way. The script poorly frame the period from putting its raw,rude face to the days of disco. The story narrowly focus on mostly self-centered 'golden youth' fall in and out of bed. Stillman lifts the veil of a group of recent university graduates, who come to New York to find a career, a husband or a wife and find a way to hook up for the night (and perhaps longer) for a roll in the hay. The young men are from Harvard,the women from a sister (Ivy League) school. Parents subsidize the women who cannot make ends meet, working as readers in a publishing house. Now if you know anything about New York in those heady days, rents were affordable,cheap restaurants... The group of friends of 'Last Days of Disco' are children the easy classes;they are accustomed to a life style and privileges that do not mirror the daily life of the working class, the lower middle classes and the like. Obliquely in the world of disco this 'golden youth' cuts obliquely through the prism of money, sex, marriage,greed and guilt and power. In a way, it naively paints a picture of suburban, well-heeled young people's fall from dignity...momentarily at least. Stillman offered a break through role for Chloe Sevigny who emerges scarred but successful. Kate Beckinsale seems born to the role of spoiler, who smashes all friendship if a rival at work or for a bed mate stand in her way. She plays the innocent when deliberately she blurts out Sevigny's character has the clap, even those the girls share a flat in the upper east side. The men are dismal but for one a lawyer who chase rainbows and are superficial,albeit Harvard graduates. Society then called them' yuppies' (upwardly mobile professionals). They foreshadowed the nest generation, in image and the terror of reality that at the end of film finds them at the labor exchange looking for work, but not Sevigny who begins to climb the world of publishing ladder to success. But the film never conveys the hopelessness that the millennials experience, no future, a life inferior to a style mum and dad and grandparents enjoyed. Stillman creates a disco that is a pale shadow of say a Studio 54; it is a toothless tiger of the days of disco: no hit of ubiquitous use of drugs, the wild abandon of sex in the loos. The absence of gays, beautiful people, the blacks and Latins who gave the disco days,the biting taste and lust. The saving grace is the music. A potpourri of the hits of Disco that set the feet tapping and gives you envy to stand up and dance. a And possibly in a reverie, dreaming that discover died or went away. And perhaps it didn't for you who went to a discotheque. Today in fast food burger spots, they pipe in the songs of Disco, as you chew your burger or sip your soft drink. The film offers no frisson, no shudder of delight. And there is no hint of AIDS that inhabited the discotheques, among other venues.

I honestly didn't have a clue what the characters said to each other in this, it was like they were mumbling throughout the whole time. What I'm meaning here is that everyone didn't speak clearly or seem interested in being involved with the movie at all.I think it would be better to not think about the story line and concentrate more on the music, this is all about Disco right?I mean, use that genre to play the type of music in which it brings us. Nothing much I can say about this film but I thought the story line was pretty boring and bleak. The songs were good at least to match the films title....

I am old enough to remember the disco era and I can say that Whit Stillman captures one essential element of that particular time.It was fun. Oh yes. It was a dance floor party.Sure, it was cheesy and the clothes were a little ridiculous. Plus, it cut into live music in a bad way. Plus, it was pure studio product. Plus, in places like New York it fed into an unhealthy velvet rope scene.But, I'm here to tell you that in Baltimore, where I'm from, it was totally healthy, whoa-baby, party-down fun. I also think it was a major gay-straight bonding thing, which the movie is very clear about. Also, it kept America dancing through a time too many people where enthralled by Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers, who ruled the airwaves but who you could not dance to.Chloe Sevigny is perfectly cast here. She's a downtowner who comes across with a level head. She has a look. Prominent upper lip blonde with sharp chin, but still pretty. She's cool in every scene. The dudes in the movie are practically interchangeable. They are all Squareheads aspiring to hipness.Whit Stillman is the poet of hip New Yawkness and all of that is on display here. The young women are aspirants in the publishing industry. They look good and the movie dotes on them. They belong in nightclubs.I didn't live in Manhattan in the disco era. But it's cool to visit with people who did. And you won't get a better visit than in this movie.