54 is written and directed by Mark Christopher, who is making his feature-film debut. His short film Alkali, Iowa did well enough on the festival circuit to nab him an exclusive two-picture deal with Miramax. And he is lucky to have it, since it gives him another shot after this very amateurish effort.

The movie follows Shane O’Shea (Ryan Phillippe), a Jersey kid whose dreams lie only three miles away in New York. One night, while out partying with his friends, he gets plucked from the crowd outside Studio 54 by the owner Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) himself. Shortly thereafter, he lands a gig as a bartender there, where he gets to rub shoulders and other parts of his bare-chested, satin-shorted body with various celebrities. Other perks of his job include having his pick of drugs and models and meeting Julie Black (Neve Campbell), a soap star from his neck of the woods. This dumb kid, who’s never heard of Errol Flynn, is now at center stage at the world’s most exclusive party being manhandled by the rich and famous, and he’s got the clap to prove it.

The inner structure of 54 – the bartenders, the busboys, the hat-check girls – serves as a makeshift family. Shane is closest to Anita (Salma Hayek), a wannabe disco diva, and her husband Greg (Brecken Meyer), a busboy who’ll never get a coveted bartender job because he’s too short and won’t blow Steve Rubell.

Alas, all jobs have their down side, as Shane learns one climactic night when he gets dumped by his girlfriend, fights with Anita and Greg, and watches the beloved Disco Dottie (played by Ellen Dow, the Rappin’ Granny in The Wedding Singer, who could very possibly mine this Granny thing through the next decade when we rediscover the Lambada), expire in a drugged spasm.

A bummer, sure – like we care. 54 seems to be taking a page from Boogie Nights (“they mentioned Lee Majors. Ha ha”). And to its credit, 54 doesn’t skate around consequences of the high-life as much as Boogie Nights. However, toward the end of Boogie Nights, you had a certain fondness for the empty-headed Dirk Diggler. Shane, for all his stunted ambition, is harder to hold onto. He’s not too sweet or too amoral or too anything. He’s just another lug blessed with a head full of golden curls being dragged through a simple-minded plot-line – awkwardly sprinkled with actors playing Capote and Warhol and the like to make it authentic – that never truly takes advantage of the energy or rush of a time and a place so bent on self-destruction.