54 Misses the Beat
I’ve got 54 problems, and this movie is all of them rolled into one.
The disco era was one of excess and indulgences in drugs, sex, and dancing. It was a brief era, only about 10 years or so, but people are fascinated by it. Within this era, a dance club was opened by the name of Studio 54. It was a notorious disco club in New York City that was founded and run by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. The club lived up to the disco era hype of over-the-top debauchery where celebrities mingled with regular folks, drugs were bought and sold to patrons by the bartenders, droves of people desperately waited outside to be chosen to enter the magical doors, and, above all, disco music reigned as king. It all came crashing down when the IRS started investigating the club’s finances and found that the owners weren’t being truthful about their earnings.
So, with a history like that, you’d think that making a movie about the club would be an easy homerun, but 54, the 1998 movie that is based on this story, falls short. In the movie, Ryan Phillippe plays Shane, an average dude from New Jersey who longs to leave his mediocre life behind for a glamorous one in New York City. He gets lucky and is chosen to enter Studio 54 where he somehow becomes a bartender. It gets all muddled from there as he becomes enmeshed in the boozy, drug and sex filled lifestyles of his fellow bartenders and coat check girls that work with him in the club.
Phillippe falls short in this role. His acting is wooden, stale, and disingenuous. When he’s supposed to be a good guy, he comes off as cheesy, when he’s supposed to be a bad boy, he exudes fake porno charm. Part of the problem is the writing, which isn’t great, but he just doesn’t seem well-suited for this role.
Phillippe isn’t the only bad actor in this movie. Salma Hayek, who plays coat check girl/aspiring disco singer Anita, is downright awful. The same problem with the writing persists in her role, but her acting also feels very forced. It’s like both of these actors had some kind of idea of what a person that worked at Studio 54 might have been like and then tried too hard to make it happen.
The only actor in the movie that did a decent job was Mike Myers, who played Steve Rubell. Up until this movie, Myers had strictly done comedic roles, most notably his character Austin Powers, so his portrayal as Steve was a giant change for Myers. He does a surprisingly good job at depicting the real-life club owner who was a known drug addict, as well as a real asshole to the people who worked for him and the people that wanted into the club. 54 probably wasn’t the best choice in a movie for Myers to stretch his acting chops, but it gave audiences a chance to see how he held up in a non-comedic role.
Here’s the biggest letdown about 54: the club was wild, the takedown of the club was insane, and the movie almost completely breezes over all of that! Studio 54 was a place where people went to have fun, to let loose, to cross boundaries that they might not have crossed if they weren’t in the club. Although the dancing scenes are seemingly accurate with tons of glitter, outrageous costumes, and people getting freaky on the dancefloor, the movie fails to truly seize that celebratory atmosphere. As for when the IRS raided the club, that scene was maybe five minutes of the movie. After that, there’s about 15 minutes where they wrap up the movie in a very predictable way.
To top it off, the script is poorly written, a lot of things that took place in the club were whitewashed and sterilized for the audience, and the acting is subpar. The audience is dragged along as Shane narrates the comings and goings of his life and new found lifestyle when the focus should’ve been on the club. The whole thing is just so blasé, which is a shame to the true story of Studio 54.
I guess if someone wants a brief overview about Studio 54 without a ton of details, this movie might work, but on the whole, 54 just doesn’t capture the essence of the real story.