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Staying Alive

Staying Alive

Drama · Music · Romance · 1983

It's five years later and Tony Manero's Saturday Night Fever is still burning. Now he's strutting toward his biggest challenger yet - making it as a dancer on the Broadway stage.

Movie details

Staying Alive

“Tony Manero knows the old days are over. But nobody's gonna tell him he can't feel that good again.”

1983 Drama · Music · Romance 1h 36m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

4.8 / 10

18.3K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

3 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

24 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

5.8 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

It's five years later and Tony Manero's Saturday Night Fever is still burning. Now he's strutting toward his biggest challenger yet - making it as a dancer on the Broadway stage.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Staying Alive?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where it lives

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Sylvester Stallone

Written by

Norman Wexler · Sylvester Stallone

John Travolta

John Travolta

Tony Manero

Cynthia Rhodes

Cynthia Rhodes

Jackie

Finola Hughes

Finola Hughes

Laura

Steve Inwood

Steve Inwood

Jesse

Julie Bovasso

Julie Bovasso

Mrs. Manero

C

Charles Ward

Butler

S

Steve Bickford

Sound Technician

Court is in session

Put Staying Alive on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.