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Not unlike an attentive bird who spots a smidgen of sustenance in a pile of cattle dung, director George Gallo and co-scripter Josh Posner’s new comedy retrieves a viable comic premise in the deservedly obscure and irredeemably wretched 1982 comedy “The Comeback Trail.” Unfortunately, their hugely enjoyable remake, in name only, was stuck in distribution limbo for the better part of five years, despite a stellar cast that includes Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan Freeman. At long last, the movie recently received an extremely limited U.S. theatrical run and is now available on digital platforms.

Speaking as someone who viewed a screener of the new and improved “Comeback Trail” back in 2020, and has puzzled over why it remained more or less shelved ever since, I am happy to report after a second viewing that the indie production is every bit as funny as I...

December 1977: Number 4 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of dance music

Released on 16 December 1977, Saturday Night Fever was the film that broke disco in both senses: it popularised and developed the form at the same time as it froze a vibrant and creative subculture. Saturday Night Fever made disco ubiquitous in 1978. It became a fad – with the inevitable backlash.

The statistics tell the story. The film took more than $3m in the first weekend, eventually going on to gross in the region of $237m; it became the fourth highest grossing movie of 1977. The soundtrack album included six Us No 1s and it topped the charts for 24 weeks in the Us, 18 weeks in the UK.

In fact, disco had been building for several years. In his ground-breaking September 1973 Rolling Stone story, Vince Aletti traced its origins in the underground return of the discotheque, "where the hardcore dance crowd – blacks,...