Mike is The Goldmember of Authentic Club 54 from the seventies. Steve Rubbel was the owner of 54 and most hated man of clubbing and night life of the The Big Apple (NY). He was convicted for unpaid taxes because that was the only way how to remove him from the show. But, that's not something what is really possible, cause show must go on. Always.

a young man in a crazy universe. fun, dramas, Mike Meyers in a seductive performance, Ryan Philippe in a nice role. and a legendary club who represents only the pretext for recreate the spirit of a period. far to be a great film, it is a decent one. and that is the only important thing- to explore the forms of a form of hedonism, free circle with its great problems, the need to escape and the surrogate of happiness. 54 has not the ambition to be a documentary. only a show about myths and bitter taste of success, hypocrisy and ambition. and it does a good job, giving few crumbs from an illusory universe. a film about forms of seduction who seduce itself. that could be all.

Shane O'Shea (Ryan Phillippe) is an innocent Jersey kid who is star-struck by the bright lights of Manhattan and wishes to meet stars like Julie Black (Neve Campbell) in Studio 54. Club owner Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) lets Shane in and ends up hiring the pretty kid as a bus boy. He befriends fellow employees Anita Randazzo (Salma Hayek) and Greg Randazzo (Breckin Meyer) who are trying to launch Anita's singing career. Meanwhile Rubell rules the club like a modern Caligula dealing drugs and getting the attention of the IRS.This is a cliché filled glossy superficial movie. It starts with the naive innocent that we're suppose to see this movie through. Shane is way too stupid, and his sycophant voice overs don't make it any better. Then there is Mike Myers. I do not begrudge anybody for taking a risk. However he is so out of his depths. In a better actor's hands, this could have been an amazing character. His amoral sleaziness could be a movie all by itself. Instead this is strictly a cliché factory. It annoyed me to no ends.

Writer-director Mark Christopher worked hard at recreating the sinfully decadent magic of Manhattan's Studio 54, the number-one celebrity hangout from the late-1970s into the 1980s, but he skimped on the most intriguing part of the nightclub's history: the relationship between business partners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. Mike Myers was a terrific choice for the flamboyant, eccentric Rubell, but Schrager has gone missing. Instead, the story is told from the point-of-view of a busboy-turned-bartender (!), a muscular rube whose innocence is soiled by boss Rubell's dirty business dealings and hedonistic trappings. The film has a low-budget feel which doesn't make itself present in the production so much as in the character-driven scenes, which are underpopulated, padded with real and faked black-and-photos, and further undermined by stilted dialogue. Ryan Phillipe is well-cast as the young stud from New Jersey whom Rubell takes under his wing, yet his voice-over narration is uncomfortably omnipresent, telling us things we can see or perceive for ourselves, and the interrelationships between the club staff are uninteresting. Some of the music is good, bringing back those long-ago nights of carefree sex and dancing-the-night-away, but Christopher doesn't grasp the big picture. As a result, the film (at best) is a series of precious little moments struggling to surface. ** from ****