Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		1.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

54 Blu-ray Movie Review

The Party's Over.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 5, 2012

Some two decades before people were partying like it was 1999, they were partying—well, like it was the late seventies. The disco era was in full swing, cocaine was the drug of choice, and sex was more recreational than at any time since the Summer of Love. Was Studio 54 the beneficiary of trends that had already become firmly entrenched, or did it foster a nascent cultural zeitgeist, propelling it to unimaginable new heights (and highs)? It was probably a symbiotic relationship, but just as probably no single place came to symbolize the excesses of the late seventies more than this converted opera house and former broadcast center, a lumbering monstrosity on West 54th Street in midtown Manhattan. (The structure is still around and houses New York's Roundabout Theater Company, where a revival of the chestnut Harvey starring The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons is about to open). An enterprising entrepreneur named Steve Rubell understood perhaps intuitively that New York (and the world) was ripe for an over the top, glitz and glam filled space where celebrities could come to see and be seen. What was part of Rubell’s particular genius, though, was his highly publicized door policy, which saw Rubell himself venturing out into the street to select ordinary everyday people to be part of the club scene. It was like winning a celebrity lottery, and it instantly catapulted Studio 54 into the publicity stratosphere. The club had its share of backstage dramas, including several raids by the police, some well publicized arrests and Rubell’s eventual imprisonment on tax evasion charges (along with his partner), but 54 the film goes a somewhat stranger route, seeing the mayhem through the eyes of a New Jersey kid named Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe in one of his first major film roles) who is first selected by Rubell to be part of the evening’s entertainment and who then gets hired to work in the club. This plays out as a sort of Star is Born story, though almost in reverse, as Shane, a decent stargazing kid from across the river sees his dreams first blossom in front of his eyes, and then suddenly decay and rot as his own moral turpitude begins to drag his once idealistic persona down to the depths of despair.

Mike Myers was perhaps an unexpected choice to play Rubell, but the casting seems pretty smart, if not total genius. Myers brings a wistful quality to the character, exposing the empty shell inside Rubell’s leering exterior, and he’s surprisingly effective in this role, a role which proves he’s certainly capable of more than the silliness of Shrek or Austin Powers. But it’s a fine performance left adrift in a shapeless mess of a film, one that does featuring some reasonably entertaining recreations of the glitz of the era and the location, but which never tries to peer beneath that surface shine.

Writer-director Mark Christopher populates his film with a company of stock characters that could have come out of any Warner Brothers “you’re going out on that stage an extra—and coming back a star” feature. Shane’s best friends at 54 are a coat check girl named Anita (Salma Hayek) who has dreams of becoming a disco star, and her husband Greg (Breckin Meyer), a club worker who aids in Rubell’s attempts to skim profits illegally while simultaneously declining Rubell’s homosexual advances. Also on tap is Sela Ward as a rich bitch who takes Shane under her wing (yes, that is a euphemism) and helps him make his entrée into high (and I do mean high) society. Neve Campbell co-stars as a former Jersey girl who has "made it big" as a soap opera actress and whom Shane lusts after as a symbol of someone who has escaped the old neighborhood for something better.

54 is simply too melodramatic to capture the admittedly drug addled ebullience that was part and parcel of the era. Christopher wants to reinvent the Rubell fantasyland as something more akin to a Douglas Sirk soap opera. Shane dreams of being part of a distant world, actually gets to experience it, and finds out it’s not everything he imagined. So what? There’s no depth to any of these characters, and so the events simply happen to them, without any emotional connection or impact. In fact a lot of 54 plays exactly like a sort of dissociative hallucination, perhaps appropriate given the subject matter.

The best part of the film is in fact its recreation of the party atmosphere of the club, replete with outlandish stage presentations, pulsating strobe lights, and, of course, throbbing disco music. Unfortunately all of these scenes play as background to the turgid personal dramas that Shane and Company are going through, rather than being the focal material. Studio 54 was such a crossroads of various cultural trends that it is embarrassingly ripe for a cinematic treatment of some kind. In fact even Rubell’s personal story is fascinating, but it’s dealt with here too discursively, as a backup element to Shane’s saga. Perhaps some day this potent subject matter will find a filmmaker up to the challenge of crafting a meaningful film about it. 54 is certainly not that film.

54 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

54 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate and Miramax with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Good heavens—what is up with these new Miramax catalog releases? As mentioned in the review of Reindeer Games, most of these Miramax catalog titles which have been released over the past several months by Lionsgate have looked at least acceptable, and sometimes very, very good indeed. But Reindeer Games was just appallingly bad, and the news on 54 isn't much different. This entire transfer has a soft, upconverted look that is often ugly and unappealing (I'm not alleging this is an upconvert, as I don't know, I'm just saying it does not have a decent high definition appearance). 54 is probably an even darker film than Reindeer Games, by which I mean the vast bulk of the film takes place in dimly lit settings (as should be obvious from the screencaps included with this review), and the persistent crush and lack of shadow detail means large swaths of the image here simply can't be well made out. There's also some of the worst posterizing in recent memory in some of the blue shaded party scenes. The one big plus with this transfer is it doesn't have the unbelievable edge enhancement and haloing that hampered Reindeer Games, but that is damning with faint praise.

54 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

54's disco fueled soundtrack is presented here via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, and that is far and away the best, most immersive, element of the audio mix. The rest of the film is surprisingly flat sounding, with little depth and inconsistent surround activity. Part of that is due to the fact that a lot of the film is simply Shane's voiceover, and other sections are smaller scale dialogue scenes offering just two or three characters at a time. Fidelity is excellent here, though, and the low end is especially impressive, something that really makes the pulsating disco music come fully alive.

54 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

If You Could Read My Mind Music Video (SD; 3:34). The Gordon Lightfoot classic gets a nice discofied reading by Stars on 45.

54 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are some good elements buried in the overall mess of 54, notably Mike Myers in a surprisingly good dramatic performance, and the wild and wacky recreations of nightlife at Studio 54. But the rest of this film is just over the top melodrama, so turgid that it would be funny if it were played just a tad more archly than it is. This subject matter cries out for a definitive film that can deal with the entire zeitgeist and not get saddled with all the silly personal drama that 54 does. The old saying that insists that "truth is stranger than fiction" might be amended slightly here to include, "and it would have made a lot better movie". Aside from the film's failings, this is the second Lionsgate- Miramax catalog release in a row to feature pretty awful looking video. The audio is great, but supp.ements are virtually nonexistent. It's hard to see what allure this release will have for anyone other than diehard fans of the film, if indeed there are any.