54 (1998)

54 (R) Flat, logy, and amateurish: a Scotch-tape-and-balsa-wood job that takes us inside the palace of New York disco dreams and then strands us on the sidelines. Ryan Phillippe, who looks like a boy toy at a Fellini orgy, plays a New Jersey naif who becomes one of Studio 54's bare-chested bartenders. Director Mark Christopher gets the club's physical details but utterly fails to capture the atmosphere of swirling Dionysian excess. There's a glimmer of what the film might have been, though, in the performance of Mike Myers, who plays Studio co-owner Steve Rubell, with his sweaty thinning hair and look-at-me-I-got-class Lacoste shirts, as a vengeful gargoyle presiding over a kingdom of beauty he can rule but never join. C-

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