[Pssst! Hey you! Watch out! Some feisty little spoilers in the fourth paragraph.]
The dangers of making a film about a club... even documentaries can't really get over what it's like to "be there". Mark Christopher's film is over-ambitious from the word go, which is probably why he chooses a sweet suburban kid as his protagonist, to make the film more personal, more real. But mass drug-taking, promiscuity, disco and mindless hedonism don't make, it has to be said, for an intimate cinematic experience.
The story of the rise and fall of New York's Studio 54 told through the eyes of aspirational Jerseyite Shane (Ryan Phillippe) is an interesting one, but the film ultimately fails because it fails to focus on the right stories. Shane is not especially dynamic or even sympathetic, and it's frustrating as we watch things happen to him rather than just seeing them happen. Christopher's mistake is failing to realise that the two main characters of "54" are Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) and the club itself, and he does not invest enough enthusiasm or affection or indeed screen time in either of them. While Anita (Salma Hayek) and Greg's (Breckin Meyer) romance is sweet and endlessly endearing, it only serves to detract further from what you feel was *really* going on at the time - that mindless hedonism I mentioned before.
Phillippe looks perfect as Shane - you can certainly understand Rubell being smitten with him. However, his petulant attitude and monotonous delivery, useful in some roles (see "Playing By Heart"), don't make for 85 minutes of great entertainment here. Hayek is surprisingly good and Myers is absolutely stunning as Rubell, a role he clearly threw his heart into, but a dismally wan Neve Campbell undermines them all, contriving to make a dull underwritten role as a soap star even duller. Shane's relationship with her feels utterly false and forced, as does his friendship with Greg - there must have been at least half an hour more of this movie that had some actual character development in it.
It's hard to escape the feeling that this film, while attempting to get across the high times and wild nights of Studio 54, has actually sanitised the club by turning it into a mere backdrop for a minor human drama which utilises countless Hollywood clichés (an old lady befriends Shane, then dies! Shane clicks with the TV star when they find they have a similar Jersey background! Shane covers for his friend's indiscretions! Plucky Anita makes it as a singer!). The trouble is, we don't care about the story and by the end we don't care much about the club either. Those who were there in 1979 will no doubt be shaking their heads at the film's representation of "their" club, while those who were, say, living in England and three years old at the time (me) will wonder what all the fuss was about. Until... the snapshots of REAL glamorous people at 54 that appear over the end credits (Minelli, Stallone, Travolta when he was obscenely hip the first time around, et al) actually give more a flavour of 54 than the whole of "54".
A shame, and a waste. As I say, I expect there was more footage, but it would probably have been of the wrong things. As it is, "54" is mercifully short. This movie marks Mike Myers' coming of age as a character actor, but little else.
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