Has nothing to sell

Rating: 3/10 (22 July 2010)

Despite all the music, dancing, flashy lights, and glitter, 54 wanders around blind deaf and dumb, making no progress and ends up amounting to nothing.
What could be more frustrating than being asked to watch two hundred people party like it's 1999, and not getting a chance to be a part of it. The film is dull. It is set up a little like Boogie Nights (which itself was set up like Goodfellas) meaning of course that the story has a first person perspective, narration included with a blow by blow description of names places and faces, and "what a good time it was" or something like that. Too bad the narrator is a piece of cardboard, as is everyone else in the movie. Neve Campbell is the only one who feels human in her performance, yet she is given practically no screen time. If director Mark Christopher had bothered to spend as much time on character as he did on useless details like figuring out what color each light source should be, 54 may have amounted to something. It doesn't. Disco may be dead, but not half as much as this is.