The strongest element of "54" is its star Ryan Phillippe, whose character, Shane O'Shea, sporadically narrates the movie. An ambitious 19-year-old nobody from Jersey City, Shane drives into Manhattan one night with a bunch of friends and finds himself the only member of his party selected for entrance into the magic kingdom presided over by the club's gay social director, Steve Rubell (Mike Meyers). But before being allowed in, Shane is told he must take off his shirt. He obliges happily and displays what one admiring woman who later takes him to bed describes as the body of Michelangelo's "David" attached to a Botticelli face.

 

 

Ascending from busboy to bartender, Shane becomes one of the club's in-house stars who at the height of his glory drives around in a car with personalized license plates. The movie pussyfoots around Shane's rapid ascent. If it were honest, it would be the story of how a handsome working-class boy, upon discovering his sexual market value, calculatedly hustles his way up the pecking order and eventually gets carried away with his "stardom."

 

 

After his inevitable comeuppance and exile from the magic kingdom, he emerges chastened. But the movie barely hints at Shane's embrace of a self-promoting bisexuality, and the outcome of a crucial scene in which Rubell puts the moves on him is left ambiguous. Phillippe, however, skillfully captures Shane's metamorphosis from working-class innocent into a vain, self-deluded demi-celebrity.

 

The movie's most pungent moments suggest the darker side of the convergence of exploitation and snobbery that Shane's kind of stardom entails. Whisked off to a fancy Park Avenue party, he finds himself the butt of sly, condescending humor. Told he's a troglodyte, he initially accepts it as a compliment, not knowing what the word means.

 

Shane is given a tepid love interest, a soap-opera star named Julie Black (Neve Campbell), who also turns out to be from New Jersey and who is also trying to hustle her career into high gear. But Phillippe and Ms. Campbell don't click together, mostly because of Ms. Campbell's hopelessly insipid acting.

 

As Rubell, who calibrated Studio 54's nightly chemistry of celebrities, pretty boys, models, moguls and colorful eccentrics, Meyers turns in a skin-deep caricature that is only a half-step away from a comic spoof.

 

Although there is real pathos in the story of a Brooklyn entrepreneur  who suddenly finds himself a New York social arbiter with all the money, drugs and boys he could possibly want at his fingertips, Meyers plays Rubell as a groggy, grinning casualty of his own success. Rubell's charm, energy, ferocity and desperate eagerness to belong are missing.

 

The movie might have worked had it decided which story it wanted to tell and stuck to its guns. But instead of exploring the hearts and souls of its urban dreamers, it feels like a crudely patched-together collection of notes for a project that got lost on the cutting-room floo

 

En 1977, Rubell et Schrager ne sont pas des inconnus de la nightlife new-yorkaise : ils possèdent une chaîne de restaurants à succès de la Grosse Pomme, Steak Loft, et les deux premiers clubs disco du pays, l’un à Boston et l’autre, l’Enchanted Garden, dans le Queens. Ouvert en 1975, ce dernier fut le laboratoire du Studio 54.

 

Steve Rubell a compris que la vague disco venue d’Europe sera l’échappatoire idéale (avec quelques adjuvants bien sûr) pour une Amérique qui se remet tout juste de la fin du Vietnam, de la crise pétrolière et du scandale du Watergate. Rubell sait aussi que le disco et ses boucles synthétiques (dont celles que Giorgio Moroder réalise pour Donna Summer) seront l’arme parfaite pour atteindre son objectif : prendre Manhattan.

 

Davantage qu’un simple patron de boîte, Rubell est un type qui possède sa propre vision de ce qu’est la nuit. Quand Schrager s’occupe des comptes et des contrats, Rubell passe toutes ses soirées dans ses établissements. Il accueille les clients, danse, picole et se drogue avec eux. Il rêve d’une fête totale, sans règles, il veut qu’un jeune type du New Jersey puisse venir se déhancher à côté d’une star, d’un mannequin ou d’une huile de l’establishment.