Getting into a more specific plot rundown, Anthony Mareno (John Travolta) is nineteen years old, works at a paint store and loves to dance, that's something Anthony is exceptionally gifted at. When he's not working, Anthony is always surrounded by a pack of rule-breaking hooligans he considers his closest friends while he lives at home with parents who are always at odds with Mareno's ambitions. Maybe his folks don't understand how important dancing is, but Tony certainly does, it's all he's got to really express himself. His love for this art form soon sees him pairing off with Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) for a super important dance competition?
Saturday Night Fever's final home stretch is a brutal thing as Tony realizes how phony everything in his dancing life is. The intense admiration people have for him is artificial, his friends aren't rambunctious punks but rather people who sexually assault women and are looking around for random people to fight. Eventually, things get so bad that death even comes into the proceedings. It's a sharp tonal turn that feels appropriate given how Tony's been oblivious to so many previous warning signs in the film that the people and places he hangs out with are not on the up-and-up morally. His eyes are wide open to what his world is actually like and Saturday Night Fever realizes that in an appropriately distressing fashion.
The build-up to that tonal punchline is less successful, though it's never bad. Much of Saturday Night Fever is more just hard to get interested or invested in unless Travolta is engaging in impressive dance choreography. Now, certainly, when this guy is shaking and grooving on the dance floor, it's a sight to behold, Travolta has such smooth movements that you totally buy this character being a dancing expert. These scenes are so well-directed and edited, not to mention the vibrancy created by by the memorably bright color palette in the lighting, that a sense of energy comes off these sequences that makes it totally understandable why Anthony Mareno would be so addicted to this world of dancing and partying.
But unfortunately, these well-realized dancing scenes aren't the only elements Saturday Night Fever focuses on before its finale, we also get plenty of character-centric scenes that have varying degrees of success. A subplot about Anthony's brother, Frank Jr., coming back home to deal with his disappointed parents after quitting a career path as a Catholic priest is probably the most successful pre-climax attempt at exploring the struggles of a person balancing a pursuit of personal identity with parental approval thanks to how the script takes time to explore how torn Frank Jr. is over the whole scenario. There's less thoughtful exploration to be found in other storylines like in any of the disposable sequences depicting Anthony interacting with female characters like Annette or Stephanie.
Part of the problem is that John Travolta, as a performer, has never been adept at creating believable human beings. Travolta works best in movies like Pulp Fiction or Face/Off that occupy a world as wacky and unorthodox as his typical acting choices, that's where he truly shines. This means that the more grounded portions of Saturday Night Fever just aren't in his wheelhouse, Travolta just cannot make Anthony a believable human being, in his most quiet moments his performance ends up making Anthony feel like a caricature. As a result, most of the numerous intimate scenes meant to get the audience to connect with Tony as a person just never quite land and the lack of effective character-build-up even makes the tonally bold finale lose some of its sting. Saturday Night Fever can shake and groove, no question about it, but its extensive attempts at pulling off more intimate human drama tend to be hamstrung by a script and a lead performance that have two left feet.
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