STAYING ALIVE

Directed by Sylvester Stallone (Paramount)

by John Mendelssohn

By the time this reaches print, Sylvester Stallone's Staying Alive will be on display at the nabes for half the price that the chic and trendy and cinemaphilic paid to see it in midsummer, and you'll be tempted to take advantage of their lower ticket prices.

Resist temptation.

You know the story. One-time Brooklyn disco king Tony Manero (John Travolta), who appears to have spent every spare minute since we saw him last pumping iron, finally gets a job dancing in a Broadway musical. After finding himself unable to dump his sweet, insipid girlfriend (Cynthia Rhodes) for a castrating bitch who dances better (Finola Hughes), he winds up the Broadway musical's star.

One means, really.

Producer/director Sylvester Stallone and co-screenwriter Norman Wexler's dialog abounds in incontestably snappy repartee. For instance, one night on the verge of August, virtually everyone in (Grau)Mann's Chinese Theatre (the one with Stallone's misspelled autograph in cement out in front) laughed aloud when, after a rival for Rhode's affection demanded, "You All-State or something?" Travolta replied, "Yeah. Want disability?"