...the soundtrack's better

Rating: 5/10 (18 July 2005)

"54"- a 1998 release of a fictionalized account of the late seventies' notorious nightclub that's peppered with drugs, decadence, and debauchery in the POV of a dimbulb from across the river that separates New Jersey from New York. Ryan Phillipe is the leading, narrating it-guy (I think this film actually helped destroy his career). Salma Hayek was the it-girl and played a philandering wife to Breckin Meyer (who, by the way, was HORRIBLY miscast to play her husband- no way Salma would ever touch him). Neve Campbell (all 10 minutes of her) played the soap star on the down, which incidentally mirrored her real-life career as well. Mike Myers as Steve Rubell stole the whole show. He played it with so much charisma, you couldn't help but to root for this freak. And even though Myers didn't look a whole lot like Rubell, he was not his usual over-the-top self and the subtle Linda Richman (SNL) voice he used, made the whole delivery work. Sela Ward had a small role in this as a hot-stuff, wired, record producer, but then again, EVERYONE had minuscule parts. Sherry Stringfield played his strung-out confidant Viv (and looked like she lost weight to the point of being unrecognized), along with Heather Matzarazzo ("Welcome to the Dollhouse", "The Princess Diaries") as Ryan Phillipe's younger sister.
The film had potential. It seemed decent most of the time, and you wanted to know a little more with what was going on in each scene. Yet it seemed more like watching an extended British theatrical trailer. An example was when Shane (Phillipe) is bummed that the magazine he posed for didn't have any text. Well, we never knew he even posed in the first place, but it must've been a piece that was snipped in order not to fully enjoy this subplot. The only problem is that there were multiple scenes that suffered from this same lack of coherence. The movie must have originally been three hours long, but the execs had to snip about half the footage for whatever reason. The result is a contorted, contrived, unremarkable film that doesn't even carry half the songs on film that are embedded in its soundtrack.
I did feel (as I did with "Boogie Nights") that I was in fact watching a documentary of the late 70s, and old memories of where I was at that time go-go danced in the back of my head. The Director of Photography deserves props (like the DPs to "American Psycho" & "Boogie Nights" do). I was only eight when this movie took place, but I remember where I was on New Year's Eve of 1979. But this film unfortunately tried to cram as much '70-isms and references as possible. When Breckin Meyer reaches for his wife, she says, "Sit on it!" Or when Shane and Meyer are the wild & crazy Czechoslovakian Brothers (Dan Aykroyd & Steve Martin in the '70s heyday of SNL). See my review of "Boogie Nights", you'll know what I mean. And I didn't buy that Shane (who wasn't a real sharp tool to begin with) magically goes to NYU and is a manager of a restaurant at the movie's end.
All in all, the movie was dramatic in parts where it shouldn't have been; had no humor where it should have; was shorter than it should have been; and had scenes that shouldn't have been. The end credits were cool to watch because of all the celebrities and icons of the time were there: Liza Minelli, Martin Scorcese, Farah Fawcett, John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone, and even the Governator of California.
Not a bad film, but by no means a good one.