by Rich Elias, Aug 26, 1998

• Rated R
• 85 Minutes
• 1 Star

"54" exhumes the New York City disco that owner Steve Rubell ran as a perpetual party with sex, drugs, and booze on the menu from 1979 until the feds nabbed him for tax evasion a few years later. Studio 54 was famous for being famous and was the hot spot for what was once called the glitterati. These were the names in the paper, the Capotes and Warhols, the Hollywood stars who have long since waned, a Princess Grace, a Saudi prince, and a rude mix of weirdlings whose only claim to fame was that Rubell let them into Studio 54.

Writer-director Mark Christopher reveals his utter and complete lack of imagination by fictionalizing the Studio 54 story as the coming-of-age tale of Shane O'Shea (Ryan Phillippe), a Jersey City boy whose idea of escaping his blue collar origins is to take his shirt off completely when Rubell, sifting the throngs in front of his disco, wants a better look at Shane's abs. Before then we get the whole "Marjorie Morningstar" thing: a few shots convincing us that, yes, Jersey City really is boring (surprise!) and, yes, Manhattan, a few miles on the other side of the river, looks exciting (surprise!)

Rubell is played by Mike Myers as a drugged-out Austin Powers who spends most scenes fumbling numbly through piles of pills or bills, depending on whether he's trying to get stoned or avoid taxes. Myers fans should note that there is barely one single funny moment in this characterization, a major flaw for writer-director Mark Christopher since that makes it even harder to understand what kind of kick Rubell was getting out of running this cocaine satrapy.

Shane's worm's eye view of Rubell's empire gets him on the inside as a busboy, then bartender, his rise promoted by a woman patron who likes his style in bed. Shane has a friend at 54 whose wife (Salma Hayek) is trying to make it as a Latin singer. She comes THIS CLOSE to wowing everybody on the 54 stage when fate, in a plot twist of stupefying banality and predictability, swerves around her, like so much bull avoiding a red cape.

"54" comes across as a "Boogie Nights" wannabe. Like that movie, it revels in artifact realism, with characters oooing and ahhing at the mention of Olivia Newton-John, whose career crested back then, and other who-were-they's of the early 80's. Unlike "Boogie Nights," "54" never bothers with character development. The plot looks like it was written on five or six cocktail napkins. And the writing is astonishingly bad. That's the good stuff. The bad stuff is that "54" is a movie that has no clear idea what it's trying to do. The focus is on Rubell and his notion that his Studio 54 was THE place in New York where princesses boogied with plumbers (albeit carefully selected plumbers) and blah blah blah. If the movie followed though by focusing on Rubell's career arc, maybe "54" would be interesting. As it is, focusing on a fictitious nobody like Shane reminds us that the sole purpose of "54" is to let us watch, nearly two decades later, sex in discos, cocaine use, and all kinds of other nasties which would shock us if we weren't already profoundly and utterly bored.

The verdict on "54" comes from Mike Myers, as Rubell, as the cops push him into the back seat of a squad car on his to 18 months at Club Fed: "This is so tacky." Amen, brother.