"54" : The Little Brother Of Boogie Nights.

Rating: 7/10 (17 November 2006)

I want it understood first off,that I "know" this is a good film. The story is good,the acting,the sets,the 70s era wardrobe & music
and the (mostly) factual story of the fall of New York City's Studio 54 disco club.
I liked what saw,the thing of it is...some of it had already been done in "Boogie Nights". The two films do have similar set-ups. In both,a young misunderstood teen/20 something boy leaves home because of his parents negativity. This made it seem,unfortunately like a copy-cat film.
In this one though,the young man who goes to work at Studio 54 sort of gets shoved aside for other inter-weaved story lines. SNL alum Mike Meyers was great as the club's owner and showed that he can be a fairly serious actor. Playing a man who can't see (in his drug induced haze)that his success is slipping away from him to the point of collapse.
I'm not rating this 5 stars because there's substandard acting or bad production values here, it's just because in following on the heels of "Boogie Nights",it could have used a different set up for the story.
I feel that is what caused it's box-office return to be less than spectacular. In fact...the day I saw it,there was only one other person in the entire audience.
(Possibly)if not for "B.N." ;this could have been a bigger and better film in the eyes of the public. It's still great though.
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