Staying Alive (1983)

 

Five years later, Tony Manero's Saturday Night Fever is still burning. Now he's strutting toward his biggest challenge yet: succeeding as a dancer on the Broadway stage. 

Stolid sequel of Saturday Night Fever doesn't live up to the quality of its predecessor, even annoys with Travolta as a dislikeable nag and with a third-rate 80s soundtrack; the show finale is a bit amusing, though.

Halliwell  (no star): "Fragile sequel to Saturday Night Fever, with some of its frenetic quality but none of its impact." 

Maltin**: "...fashioned by director/cowriter Stallone into a ROCKY-type vehicle for Travolta...Broadway show finale, Satan's Alley (billed, with amazing accuracy, as a musical trip to Hell), is a camp classic, but neither the script nor the music...are in a class with the original 1977 film."

 

Willie and Phil (1980)

Life imitates art when two Manhattanites become friends after a thought-provoking screening of "Jules et Jim," Truffaut's classic film about a decades-long ménage à trois.

From memory: Nicely made, well-intentioned, but utterly superfluous reimagination of Truffaut's classic Jules et Jim; likable, but a far cry from the original.

Halliwell (no star): "Curious attempt at an American Jules et Jim; not badly done if you have to do it, but why do it?"

Maltin***: "Affectionate, perceptive, underrated retelling of JULES AND JIM...A wistful tale of how chance encounters alter lives, how camaraderie between friends is everlasting, how men always do the asking but women do the deciding."