This Blu-ray starts up right away because it doesn’t include that BD-Java crap. The main menu is simple, clean and features Staying Alive playing in the background right away it puts you in the mood to watch. The Travolta strut at the beginning is still one of the greatest movie openings, ever. I hate that people hate on Travolta and Cruise because of their religion and not their body of work. Saturday Night Fever is still one of the greatest dance movies of all time. Yeah it feels incredibly dated when you watch it now, but it still captures that brief moment in time when Disco was king. The B-Gees soundtrack remains a classic that will forever put a smile my face whenever I hear any songs from it – except the non B-Gees stuff like that awful Beethoven disco track. I don’t know about this 1080P transfer, it looks fuzzier in spots than my DVD copy, I don’t see much of an HD bump at all. The colors look muted and dated, when I expected everything to just jump off the screen. The Disco scenes were especially disappointing, with all those vibrant colors HD should have been a good HD “Showcase” but it was just kind of bland. The audio include English 5.1 TrueHD, French 5.1 Dolby Digital, Spanish Mono, and subtitles in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. I don’t understand why the Spanish Audio track is in Mono. What is the point of having a mono track on a Blu-ray disk? Does Paramount think Spanish people don’t want full HD sound on their high-end entertainment systems?
Special Features
Commentary by Director John Badham
Catching the Fever
- A 30 Year Legacy (15 Min) HD)
- Making Soundtrack History (12 Mins) (HD)
- Platforms & Polyester (10 Mins) (HD)
- Deejays & Discos (10 Min) (HD)
- Spotlight on Travolta (3 Min) (HD)
Back to Bay Ridge (9 Min) (HD) – It’s pretty neat they return to some of the loriginal Brooklyn locations that they filmed in like Lenny’s Pizza, the original Hardware store, etc.
Dance Like Travolta with John Cassese – The Dance Doctor (9 Mins) (HD) – Very cool they show you how to do the slow dance number from the “More Than A Woman” scene.
Fever Challenge! (4 Min) (HD) – A mini game of DDR that shows you the steps for Night Fever
70s Discopedia – is a PopUp Trivia track for the movie.
Deleted Scenes (3 Deleted Scenes) (SD)
Conclusion
I’ve always liked Saturday Night Fever a lot, I don’t love it and it isn’t the type of film I would watch again and again. This Blu-ray disc is disappointing I don’t think the transfer is very good, I do like that all the featurettes are in HD. If you already own the DVD don’t buy this.
Grades
- Movie – B
- Video – C
- Audio – A
- Extra Features – B
- Menu/Navigation – A
Final Overall Grade – C
EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted, 5.31.09