One of the best take me back to the 70s movies. I loved it then, and I love it now.

One night in a disco involving various characters and situations.Most people like this for its accurate representation of the Disco Era. Its all here--the terrible clothes, music and casual drug taking. It also has a great five minute or so bit where Donna Summer belts out "Last Dance" (a deserved Academy Award winner for Best Song). But one good bit does not excuse the rest of the movie. It's badly written and badly acted full of characters you could care less about. The dramatic moments come across as unintentionally hilarious while the intentional comedy is downright painful. It's hard to believe that Jeff Goldblum, Debra Winger and Donna Summer still had careers after this fiasco. I caught it on cable TV a few years ago and it was a real chore watching the whole thing! The only thing I could think of after was TGIO--Thank God It's Over! For a much better and more accurate representation of disco rent "Saturday Night Fever" (the R rated version). Avoid, at all costs, this mess. Gets a 2 just for "Last Dance".

This film was hugely disappointing, with only a few redeeming features (which I'll mention last). I usually enjoy silly disco-era films, and was hoping this would at least be amusing in a Can't Stop The Music way, but this was hopeless. At least Can't Stop The Music let you enjoy the music. In TGIF, snippets of dozens of disco tracks are heard in the background while various characters chatter away in one unfunny scene after another, like a particularly lame and crowded episode of The Love Boat. Though this is set in a disco, the film seems uninterested in any of the dancing, even during the dancing competition finale everyone's been talking about during the rest of the film. The one exception would be the awkward and not very disco dancing-on-the-tops-of-cars scene. It's hard to think of many ways the production or direction of this film could have been worse.HOWEVER, this has some nostalgia value for being set almost entirely in a 70's disco. AND, when Donna Summer sings Last Dance the film finally has a few minutes of glitzy fun. For the one and only time, the music gets all the attention. It's a great song, and Donna looks and sounds like what you'd expect from a disco diva - love the big hair.

I picked up a copy of this from Wal-Mart for like 4 bucks, thinking it would be yet another wonderfully horrible disco musical for me to cringe at and enjoy at the same time. Sadly, Thank God It's Friday is not nearly as loathsome as Can't Stop the Music, which set a bench mark for bad musicals that could only be reached by From Justin to Kelly. The story (such as it is here) follows about 500 characters as they dance the night away at a disco club called The Zoo (oh brother). The big event of the night is the dance contest, which doesn't occur until the movie's last few minutes and is not at all epic or exciting. I say the flick has about 500 characters because it literally does. There are so many people here that trying to invest any interest in them is pretty much impossible. Just when you're starting to figure out who certain characters are, the movie zips to the other side of the club and we meet a dozen or more new guys and gals. There's the two girls who want to win the contest so they can buy KISS tickets, the DJ who has to prove himself on his first night at the club, a budding singer who just needs a big break, an angry short fellah whose blind date is an insanely tall, shy woman, a dorky guy and a nice guy who are looking for love, a party gal and a nice gal who are looking for love, a woman who needs some fun in her life but is married to a complete stiff, a stud (played by JEFF GOLDBLUM, mind you) who makes bets with the DJ on who he can get back to his apartment, etc. etc. etc. Needless to say, the story is pretty much nonexistent, with a cameo by The Commodores barely registering on the Interesting Scale. The best part of the entire movie is when the girl who wants to be a singer, played by Donna Summers, sings the groovy hit The Last Dance. What surprised me is how the movie is rated PG but has a lot of cursing as well as drug use. I guess that back in the 70's this kind of material was seen as pretty tame. Also, the comedy struck me as being awfully cornball, and the running jokes were either stupid to begin with or made no sense at all (what is up with the Tarzan waiter, anyway?!). But, as I said before, this is a masterpiece when compared to garbage like Can't Stop the Music. Watchable, but still kind of stinky. 1.5/4 stars