Last Days Of Disco, The MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -2

This is the third of a trilogy of romantic comedies from writer-director Whit Stillman. The first two were "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona," and like those, LAST DAYS focuses on a group of recent college graduates and their dating habits. It takes place in Manhattan during the early 1980s, when disco clubs were the place for singles to socialize. Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) and Alice (Chloe Sevigny) both graduated from Hampshire College and work for a New York publisher. Charlotte is pretty, self-centered, insensitive and obnoxious. Alice, on the other hand, is attractive, intelligent and rather quiet. As a financial necessity, they decide to share a tiny "railroad car" apartment with another girl. Charlotte tells Alice she is not pretty, was never liked in college and will have to be more worldly to attract men. THE LAST DAYS chronicles an era of yuppie socializing that was more about sexual conquests than finding a lifetime soulmate. Young adults may find it fun to watch the frantic disco club activity and humorous escapades of Manhattan single life in 1980.

Inside the disco club music blares, liquor flows along with drug use, and the dance floor is jammed with homosexuals dancing, a bare-breasted woman and young professional heterosexuals. Alice leaves with a divorced lawyer and remembers Charlotte's lectures on being worldly. She spends the night with him, only to find out later he is really turned off by her willingness to have sex. To make matters worse, she contracts a sexually transmitted disease from that one encounter. Her roommates bring their boyfriends home with them, but sex is implied only. The only on-screen sex is a brief glimpse of Des (Chris Eigeman), a club employee, caught having sex just as the police raid the club. The woman is shown nude from the waist up. Des has a habit of telling his girlfriends he is gay when they start to pressure him for a commitment. Along with this carefree attitude about sex, THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO has the usual offensive language, most of which is regular profanity. Fifteen regular profanities and six obscenities, plus a few crudities pollute the script. Hollywood's portrayal of mostly immoral singles in recent romantic comedies is unfair and disappointing.

Preview Reviewer: Mary Draughon
Distributor: Polygram Filmed Entertainment