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BY KIM MORGAN
54 |
Here's a fascinating true story: In the late '70s Steve Rubell, a Brooklyn-born former steakhouse owner and struggling entrepreneur, dreamt that one day he would reign supreme over a paradise populated by the Beautiful People. Casting aside his geeky image, he would have them kneeling at his tennis-shoed feet. His dream came true: At 254 West 54th St. in New York City, Rubell created Studio 54, a place where the beautiful, the bad, the bizarre and the famous could writhe in Dionysian, drug-hazed frenzy and network 'til dawn. But Rubell was dishonest and given to excess, and his fame came at a price. Reveling in his world of cute boys, drugs and fortune, Rubell finally hit rock bottom: Busted by the IRS, he spent a couple of unfabulous years behind bars and died shortly thereafter.Here's an uninteresting, untrue story: In 1979 a 19-year-old New Jersey boy named Shane O'Shea dreamt that one day he would cross the red velvet ropes that separated the dismal world of the average Joe from the pleasure dome of hipness: He would enter Studio 54. His dream came true. He made friends with a part-time drug dealer and a coat-check girl who wanted to become a disco diva. He became a busboy, then a bartender, and met the girl of his dreams--Julie Black, a regular old Jersey girl who made good by becoming a famous soap-opera star. He screwed a lot of women, did drugs, and then got sick of it all. He became a suit-and-tie type just in time for '80s yuppiedom. So why does the boring story provide the framework for the latest disco picture? Dunno. Perhaps writer/director Mark Christopher thought that the innocent-turned-sexpot would make the glitzy story more human, à la Mark Wahlberg's brilliantly touching busboy-turned-porn star in Boogie Nights. Maybe he thought that the loser-Jersey-guy-meets-the-successful-Jersey-girl theme would tap into the relationship that Brooklynites John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney shared in Saturday Night Fever. Maybe he thought the coat-check girl who gets her big chance would hearken back to Donna Summer in Thank God It's Friday. Or maybe he was attempting to make a smart film that would dissect and criticize the era, a film more like the dryly funny but depressing The Last Days of Disco. Christopher probably thought about all of these things, but he clearly didn't think them through. Coming nowhere near the complexity and entertainment of those other pictures, 54 is a shallow and tedious disappointment. Though the director got some of the nightclub's particulars right--the cocaine-snorting moon, the famed basement, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote--he missed its spirit, sadness and funky good times. In fact, Christopher's take is so utterly un-fun--even the music is lousy--that 54 carries with it a sense of blasphemy. 54? Fifty-snore is more like it. The film's protagonist certainly seems more sleepy than coked-up. As played by newcomer Ryan Phillippe, the story's Jersey-boy narrator has neither charisma nor energy. Without the sexual braggadocio, vulnerability and confusion that a tough Jersey kid might feel strutting around shirtless in tight satin shorts, Phillippe comes off as a bored Details model waiting for his close-up. Though it is perhaps unfair to compare an actor to his masters, Phillippe pales beside Travolta's and Wahlberg's amazing portraits of rough innocence. Devoid of both sexuality and dancing ability, he looks like a WASPy teenager trying to jive at a school dance. He should have studied Travolta's performance in Fever : The man conveyed more intensity just walking and eating during his famous red-shoed strut to the Bee Gee's "Stayin' Alive." The female principles aren't much better. As soap star Black, Neve Campbell is a mess. Both her look (what's up with the Aniston hairdo?) and her voice are wrong for the era; she sounds as though she's constantly suppressing the habit of saying "like" every few words. Salma Hayek fits in better as the coat-check girl, but she is given little to do except be her cute self. At least she's enjoyable to watch. 54's only redeeming factor is Mike Meyers. With a prosthetic nose, balding pate and constant grin, Meyers makes the potentially despicable Rubell a real person--pathetic but sympathetic. Though there are too many scenes of him whining and schmoozing, and not enough of what made him interesting in the first place, Meyers ably conveys the man's weird joy over his funky scene. He is so much better than anything else in 54 that it's a shame he didn't just direct it himself. How about Steve Rubell: International Man of Mystery?
originally published September 2, 1998 |
