John Badham
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Among her employees is a sweet, nerdy Indian guy (Dev Patel, marginally more believable, on account of being an actual Indian, than Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit) who dreams of instilling consciousness in these buckets of bolts.
However you dress up the movie, it really is a clunky mashup of Short Circuit (1986) and RoboCop (1987) — with large dollops of Mr. Dickens’ Oliver Twist thrown in.
Short Circuit's Johnny Five was one of those gentle, self-aware robots, inclined to tolerate humankind's failings rather than hunt us to extinction.
It’s idiotic, incoherent and downright punishing to sit through – unless you’ve been hankering for an ultra-violent remake of Short Circuit in which Steve Guttenberg and Ally Sheedy are played by Die Antwoord.
“RoboCop,” “Short Circuit” and even “A.I.” have been cited as inspirations for “Chappie,” but they’re so prevalent in parallels, it feels like elements are directly lifted.
Unfortunately, for me it is a movie that does not pay homage to previous films (“Robocop,” “Short Circuit” come to mind) but borrows liberally and directly from these and other movies.
American Hustle (2013)
Directed by David O. Russell
influenced by Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Visuals Characters
Stylistically and spiritually, American Hustle belongs in the same camp as vintage Scorsese and Saturday Night Fever .
Though American Hustle resembles Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino in certain particulars of plot and milieu (but not in its visual style, which is more functional than Scorsese-ecstatic), the real touchstones for its outer-borough shenanigans are Saturday Night Fever and the Sidney Lumet films Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon : manic street operas, in which the arias were Italians and Jews shouting at one another.
Sprucing up like John Travolta getting ready for the disco in “Saturday Night Fever” (which came out in the same period in which this movie is set), Cooper wears a medallion on his exposed chest.
It evokes both the Copacabana scene in “Goodfellas” and “Saturday Night Fever”.
If you used the word “hustle” in the period when this caper movie is set – the “Saturday Night Fever” ’70s – you would have been referring to a dance, not a con.
There’s similar all-in commitment by Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, who all dress and comport themselves as if they wandered off the set of Saturday Night Fever .
He recalls it as a combination of An Officer and a Gentleman and Saturday Night Fever.
That specificity isn’t necessarily a flaw; just a reminder that Ted, like all of writer-director MacFarlane’s produce, traffics heavily in pop culture curios (he even goes so far as to spoof a scene from Flying High; itself already spoofing Saturday Night Fever ).
A disco flashback that seems to be referencing “Saturday Night Fever” is actually recreating the spoof of it in “Airplane!”
Like Family Guy, the film serves up cutaway digressions that are hilarious partly for being so unexpected; a flashback to John's first meeting Lori is cast in the form of homage to the Saturday Night Fever disco dance lampoon in Airplane!
It�s not enough to have a dumb Saturday Night Fever reference plugged into the center of one of the few scenes without the bear.
…doing a parody of John Travolta in"Saturday Night Fever" and while it earns points for nerve, nerve isn't everything in comedy.
Nuclear missile horror stories used to be more frequent in the years after the Cold War first heated up, most famously 1964’s accidental diptych Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, followed by 1983’s accidental diptych WarGames and The Day After.
…the best “impending nuclear war” films are John Badham’s WarGames and Steve De Jarnatt’s Miracle Mile…
…but whatever happened to nail-biters such as WarGames (John Badham, 1983) and Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964)…
This is the lesson of WarGames (1983) after all: “The only winning move is not to play.”
The threat of nuclear war was evoked regularly in films such as WarGames (1983)…
I also had a strange fascination with films that dealt with those themes from the horrific presentations of the aftermath in the TV film, The Day After and the feature Testament to the dystopian depictions in Miracle Mile to the near-miss silliness of WarGames and the scarily timely docu-portrayal of a nuclear power plant accident in The China Syndrome.
Finch (2021)
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik
influenced by Short Circuit (1986)
Visuals Themes Plot Characters
In terms of design and performance, Jeff borrows many of the lovable elements of other well-known mechanical lifeforms – from Short Circuit (1986) to Wall-E (2008).
So we’ve got Short Circuit , WALL-E , The Road and The Quiet Earth as the most obvious reference points.
Article content Apple is the site for his newest, which combines elements of WALL-E and Cast Away , with bits of The Martian and Short Circuit thrown in.
It does, however, have Hanks, who delivers the mawkishness with an appealing level of wit, basically playing second banana to the adorable mutt and the oft-annoying robot, Jeff, a first cousin of the equally smarmy droid from 1986’s “Short Circuit.”
Well, in a strange way, I’m thankful that the folks in Cupertino saved a genuinely strange little film like this from its probable failure (and subsequent branding as a “bomb”) at the box office, because Finch plays like a bizarre mash-up of The Road (or insert your own post-apocalyptic film or book here, though it’s more The Dog Stars than A Boy and His Dog ) and Short Circuit .
As far as science fiction films go, Finch is not entirely new, where movies such as Short Circuit , Her , and Bicentennial Man have focused on the relationships of humans and robots.
Don Jon (2013)
Directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt
influenced by Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Plot Themes Characters
Visits with the family â?? Tony Danza has a great time as Jon’s dad â?? evoke “Saturday Night Fever,” while Barbara’s increasing efforts to help Jon improve himself ultimately echo the one-sided endgame of Neil LaBute’s “The Shape of Things.”
There's no dancing in Gordon-Levitt's writing-directing debut, Don Jon, although the movie is so heavily reminiscent—in the good way—of Saturday Night Fever that an arm-swinging paint-can reverie wouldn't be out of place.
Though it’s set in New Jersey rather than Brooklyn, “ Don Jon ” -- written and directed with frenzied energy by Gordon-Levitt -- cheerfully steals from the 1977 “ Saturday Night Fever ” in its tale of an Italian-American stud-slash-dolt who harbors a spark of life that draws him toward the wider world.
The “Saturday Night Fever” of its generation, “Don Jon” addresses a definitive generational issue (young men and Internet porn) in a way that is hilarious, honest, insightful, sexy and not (too) creepy.
A strutting Guido, Jon is part Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever, part Tony Soprano, and a jot of Jersey Shore'sThe Situation.
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt does double duty, making his feature writing/directing debut with this terrific and unusual comedy that taps into this year's cinematic focus on porn while following the basic groove of "Saturday Night Fever."
Boogie Nights (1997)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced by Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Music Themes
The omnipresent soundtrack– Nights is a combination of American Graffiti (the prolific use of songs), Goodfellas (the way music is used to move a scene) and Saturday Night Fever (the general feel of the first hour… and look for the Staying Alive reference in the film’s second half)–the soundtrack draws so much attention to the way the film looks, it’s almost like Anderson is telling the viewer the story doesn’t matter too much.
The film, which begins in 1977 (just in time for a dancing "Saturday Night Fever" homage), casually incorporates such milestones as Dirk Diggler's virtual baptism in a hot tub and the New Year's Eve gunfire that ends the 1970s with a bang.
A bracing antidote to the likes of Saturday Night Fever and the whole revolting disco movement, the tone of Boogie Nights is what, in the end, makes it great: it is a story that could only have happened in America (will it play as poorly overseas as the less courageous People vs. Larry Flynt?), and could only have taken place during the peculiar years that straddled two decades and mark, for now, the depths of greed, decadence, self-delusion and lack of taste and sense to which a great and spoiled society could sink.
Arrisco dizer que me senti muito mais imerso e envolvido nesta experiência do que em “Saturday Night Fever“.
Actually, it’s quite laughable, but for the sake of those sensitive to spoilers, I’ll leave it with this: it seems the screenwriters loved “2001,” “WarGames,” and “The Terminator” so much, they decided to pluck what they needed to fill their own creative pockets, even cribbing from Hitchcock for the grand finale.
Then there's the film's many obvious sources of inspiration, which include (but are not limited to) 2001, Blade Runner, Tron, Wargames, The Terminator, The Fugitive, the Bourne films, and Live Free or Die Hard.
When your movie is essentially ripping off “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “WarGames,” however, it is not as easy to forgive.
The two worked together on Badham's superior "WarGames" (1983), and they spend the short time discussing the similarities between the two films.
When Johnny Depp starred in it, it was “Nick of Time” (1995).
I've described perhaps the first third of the film, and up to this point there is no dialogue; merely chirps, whizzes and beeps that will have you cooing nostalgically with thoughts of R2-D2, with the robot's inviting visual appearance recalling Johnny 5 from guilty '80s pleasure "Short Circuit."
Despite public outcry, WALL-E is nothing like the robot Number 5 from 1986’s “Short Circuit”.
I have to admit, though, that the initial trailers completely turned me off because the film looked painfully cute and the robot brought back bad memories of Short Circuit.
The filmmakers overtly acknowledge the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey (one robot in the film is specifically designed to resemble HAL 9000's evil eye—cue the "Blue Danube Waltz"), and internet wags have commented on Wall•E's resemblance to Number 5 from Short Circuit , but the most interesting resemblance is to the "B" Ark plot thread from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
He looks like an outtake from Short Circuit; you can only figure out what he's trying to say about half the time (though context helps) and he's rather single-minded of purpose.
Looking like a cross between R2-D2 and Johnny-5 from "Short Circuit", WALLâ?¢E most importantly has a lot of personality, which makes this "Hello Dolly!"-loving buzzing trashcan an instantly adorable creation.
My, does he give it everything—strutting and gliding, along sidewalks and into shops, during the opening credits, as if treading in the red-booted footsteps of John Travolta, at the start of “Saturday Night Fever.”
You can’t help but recall John Travolta’s iconic strut to kick off “Saturday Night Fever.”
Instead of his red-torsoed spider suit, Parker soon wears a black-chested one, and the space goop turns the human Parker into a jerk in a dramatically primitive sequence that has him strutting down the avenue Saturday Night Fever style, snapping his fingers at the babes and combing his hair forward in a downbeat emo mode.
Even more significantly, these impulses spill over into his life as Peter, and he adopts a disco strut, as if he's been invaded by the spirit of the young John Travolta and infected with a heavy dose of Saturday Night Fever.
Raimi shows us how evil Parker’s gotten by having him strut down the street, Saturday Night Fever style, and performing a wacky dance number.
Curtis Hanson’s “8 Mile,” a not-really-but-kind-of biography of Eminem in which the rapper himself stars, is straightforward, rudimentary, old-fashioned moviemaking, cranking away in the service of a story we’ve seen over and over again, from “Rebel Without a Cause” to “Saturday Night Fever.”
Though in reality (and ironically) Eminem did not win his last battle, his story would seem like fine Hollywood fodder (comparisons to "Saturday Night Fever" and "Rocky" are anything but coincidental).
Set in 1995 Detroit, 8 Mile is more or less a whipped creamversion of Eminem's life story, inflated and decorated to fit in withmovies like Saturday Night Fever, Flashdance and PurpleRain.
While it’s not Best Picture material, “8 Mile” succeeds at what itout to do, to show parents and cynics what all the fuss is about (not for Eminem, but for the music as a whole) and to give dedicated hip-hop fans what “Saturday Night Fever” gave to disco fans 25 years ago.
And, not unlike John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, he's got to prove himself by winning the biggest contest in his miserable little burb.
Like the fighting in "Rocky" and the dancing in "Saturday Night Fever," the rap songs in "8 Mile" possess a redemptive power.
His entrance is highly reminiscent of John Travolta's in Saturday Night Fever, as he walks down the streets of Tokyo to the beat of a Japanese cover of Staying Alive .
At least they have the wit to underscore Pitt’s initial appearance with a Japanese artist’s rerecording of the Bee Gees song Staying Alive, complete with feet walking towards camera straight out of Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977).
Ready Player One (2018)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced by WarGames (1983), Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Dialogue Visuals
(A conversation with Halliday’s online avatar closely recalls a similar scene with Professor Falken in WarGames , and carries the same sense of melancholy.)
As a book, RPO is rooted in iconography without seemingly understanding the meaning behind any of it; a fanboy’s silly wet dream, harnessed around the thinnest of plots and silliest of set pieces (a whole sequence set inside the Matthew Broderick movie WarGames ?
If the hero crushes on a worthy, kickass avatar competitor named Art3mis (the terrific Olivia Cooke, so good in Thoroughbreds), you have to know that he’ll spend his pre-date hours trying on looks that emulate Michael Jackson, Prince, Duran Duran and Buckaroo Banzai and that soon after, he and Art3mis will burn down the disco with a dancing-on-air showstopper that recalls John Travolta and Donna Pescow’s rug-cutting moves in Saturday Night Fever.
His strong eye for shadows and love for a more patient pacing help build suspense and make even the most potentially campy concepts—like a Tyrannosaur-velociraptor hybrid lowering itself down from the roof above a young girl’s bedroom window, a la John Badham’s Dracula —have a delicious menace.
Me Before You (2016)
Directed by Thea Sharrock
influenced by Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981)
Characters Plot Themes
Others (“Whose Life Is It Anyway?”) are built on characters and performances of such intense brio that we question the decision, even as we understand what a circumscribed life would mean to such a person.
The story belongs to Clarke and Claflin, and it plays like "Pretty Woman" one scene, "Whose Life is It Anyway?" the next.
“Me Before You” has echoes of everything from “Jane Eyre” to “Whose Life Is it Anyway?”
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021)
Directed by Wes Anderson
influenced by Short Circuit (1986)
It is in that space several folks, including the Cartoonist (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman), the Story Editor (Fisher Stevens, “Short Circuit”) and the Copy Editor (Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”) have come to plan the obit and grieve for their fallen leader.
He has the infectious grin of a young Matthew Broderick— the similarities between them might be distracting if it weren’t such a pleasure to be reminded of what it was like to discover that earlier cheeky grin back in the WarGames, Project X and Ferris Bueller era.
Similar themes have been used and reused--even in previous movie hits, like 1983's "WarGames," a teen thriller with Matthew Broderick accidentally reprogramming the Pentagon's war machine computer (a film that may have inspired a lot of real-life hackers).
The Last Days of Disco (1998)
Directed by Whit Stillman
influenced by Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Themes
Unlike the characters in " Saturday Night Fever ," who were basically just looking for a good time, these upwardly mobile characters are alert to the markers of social status.