As another installment of Whit Stillman's trilogy, The Last Days of Disco fits chronologically between Metropolitan (1990) and Barcelona (1994), with several cameos overlapping and linking the films. During "the very early 1980s," friends gather at a popular Manhattan disco club reminiscent of Studio 54, where getting past the velvet ropes and inside was the first step. Edgy ad-exec Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) can sometimes get his clients in with the help of the club's womanizing assistant manager,
his pal Des (Chris Eigeman), who lets them enter via the rear door. Beautiful brunette Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) and her former college classmate Alice (Chloe Sevigny) move about the club during the 24-minute opening club sequence. Attorney Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) takes an interest in calm, reserved Alice. Both Alice and the opinionated, assertive Charlotte hold day jobs as entry-level editorial associates at a small book publisher. With Holly (Tara Subkoff) as a third roommate, the trio rents a railroad flat in the Manhattan's Yorkville neighborhood. Charlotte throws dinner parties in an effort to solidify a social circle as an alternative to "the ferocious pairing off" around her. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
The pleasures in The Last Days of Disco come when the friends rant and quarrel and sulk and circle each other with an unstable mixture of need and resentment.
If this film ... doesn't fully rise to the lovely vibrancy of Barcelona, it still extends the witty, quizzical style of Stillman's social comedies onto inviting new terrain.
Stilillman pulls off a unique balancing act of conveying the specificities of the cultural milieu but also maintaining a sense of universality that keeps the film from being solely about its time and place
The single finest moment in The Last Days of Disco comes at the end, during the credits... The scene is alive and exciting, and I wish there were more of that in the movie.
Whit Stillman's subtle but profound take on the fallacy of indulgent self importance. Don't let the title put you off, The Last Days of Disco is an underrated gem!
January 17, 2009
Randy Tippy
Super Reviewer
This Movie is from Criterion Collection, most movies from this collection are pretty good, but this one is not. It Sucks. Its about the Eighties Time Frame, and shows the lives of a number of people throughout the Movie. To me the movie made little sense, and had about every disco song in it. 1 1/2 stars for effort.
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