The second movie this year about the disco era, 54, a chronicle of the notoriously decadent nightclub at its very height, is just as disappointing as Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco, albeit for different reasons.
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Theatrical release poster
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Grade: C+ (**out of *****)
Strong on ambience and vividly capturing the circus-like, celeb-driven spot, this basically plotless movie suffers from a formulaic script that feels like a reworking of Saturday Night Fever, conventional style, and a neat ending that sugarcoats reality, considering the actual dramatis persona on which it’s loosely based. It also comes across as imitative of Paul Thomas Anderson’s far superior, Boogie Night.
Despite these shortcomings, however, tyro director Mark Christopher gives the picture a brisk pace and a colorful, party-like mood that makes the experience painless and sporadically even enjoyable. Miramax release should enjoy a decent run in major urban centers, where young to middle-age viewers might be motivated to see it by nostalgia, but it’s not likely to play well in Middle America and rest of the country.
In Last Days of Disco, which boasted strong characters and sharp dialogue, Stillman failed to convey the unique feel and texture of disco palaces as “contempo churches” for their devoted denizens. Taking almost the opposite approach, Christopher focuses on the ambience, color, music, and costumes of a drug-oriented, hedonistic subculture, but neglects matters of narrative and characterization. Unlike Stillman, who totally ignored the gay factor, helmer Christopher acknowledges the gays contribution to the 70s disco subculture though, with the exception of a few homoerotic scenes, 54 is straight in both senses of the term.
Using the format of Saturday Night Fever, without the latter’s emotional honesty and richness of detail, Christopher tells his story from the point of view of a handsome, working-class youngster whose ultimate ambition–and perception of the American Dream–is to leave his drab Jersey City origins and cross the “bridge” to glamorous Manhattan, epitomized in 1979, when the yarn begins, by Studio 54.
In lieu of John Travolta’s blue-collar Italian-American, here, the misunderstood rebel-hero is Shane O’Shea (Ryan Philippe), a naive, 19 year old Irish-American, whose mother died at 12, and now lives with his severe dad and siblings, though he’s close to sister Grace (Welcome to the Dollhouse’s Heather Matarazzo). Like many youngsters of his background, Shane arrives at the disco uninvited and “unprepared,” wearing the wrong outfit (a striped shirt), but his good looks and charm get him into the club, where he quickly and willingly absorbs its distinctive norms and values.
The thin, clichd’ tale concerns Shane’s fast rise from a busboy to the “glamorous” job of a shirtless bartender. His mobility puts him in direct competition with his equally ambitious buddy Greg (Breckin Meyer), a handsome busboy who’s too short to work behind the bar. Very much in the manner of Boogie Nights (which is set in the same period), the studio and its employees soon become Shane’s surrogate family, including co-owner and entrepreneurial spirit Steve Rubell (Mike Myers), who runs the place in the peculiar style of a stern but understanding father. Shane also befriends Greg’s Latina wife, Anita (Salma Hayek), a coat check girl who aspires to become a hot disco queen-singer.
Like Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero, Shane is essentially an innocent, good-hearted kid, who aspires to find his place in the world by hooking with the right crowd, here represented by an attractive soap star (Neve Campbell), who shows slight romantic interest in him, and a bunch of Park Avenue types, decadent men and rich, older women like Billie (Sherry Stringfield). There’s a sharply observed dinner party scene in a posh Park Avenue mansion, where Shane and Anita are totally out of their element, embarrassingly unable to recognize Errol Flynn when his name comes up. Unfortunately, Christopher ignores the interesting class issue: how blue-collar men could build a career based on their charisma and sex appeal–at a price.
The script covers a short period, catching the disco in the summer of 1979, at its very height, and observing it through its decline, a year later. All the melodramatic events appear in quick succession in the last reel, beginning with an old woman, Disco Dottie (Ellen Albertini Dow), who O.D.s and dies on the floor, cash money disappearing, IRS investigations after Rubell’s arrogant pronouncements, and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment. This by no means suggests that the movie is messy. Approaching the club as a legit character, Christopher structures the action along 10 nights, each illustrating a major theme as the disco devolves from a celestial paradise to a lost one.
To end the film on an upbeat note, the last, rather fake act describes a welcome home party to Rubell after his prison term, and Shane’s “rehabilitation” to a NYU business student.
Except for Myers, who brings some edge and humor to his role, rest of the ensemble is appealing but lacks distinction, mostly a due to the shortcomings of the writing. The best way to experience 54 is succumb to its exuberant music (a couple of songs are splendidly performed) and marvel at the ostentatious costumes (designed by Ellen Lutter), which showcase the crowd as preening peacocks in a grand costume ball.
Assisted by Alexander Gruszynski’s lurid lighting, 54 is one big party movie, not as frivolous as Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear or as pretentious as Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, but not much deeper either.
A more critical and resonant Hollywood movie about the glorious disco culture of yesteryear screams to be made.
End Note:
In 2008, a bootleg version of the director’s cut was screened at OutFest, leading to interest for its release. In 2015, Christopher and Miramax premiered a new edit of the film at the Berlin Fest, with 45 minutes of original material restored and 30 minutes of studio re-shoots removed.
Credits:
Directed, written by Mark Christopher
Produced by Ira Deutchman, Richard N. Gladstein, Dolly Hall
Narrated by Ryan Philippe
Cinematography Alexander Gruszynski
Edited by Lee Percy
Music by Marco Beltrami
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date: August 28, 1998
Running time: 93 minutes; 105 minutes (Director’s cut)
Budget $13 million
Box office $16.8 million
