♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best Music Movie of the Year + Best New York Movie of the Year + Best Period Movie of the Year
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| Glamorous poster for Mark Christopher's 54 |
QUICK REVIEW:
We are at New York's Studio 54 disco, and the 80s are right around the corner: A young dreamer from Jersey arrives and is lucky enough to get a job there; sex, drugs, some fame and lots of disco follow.
54 is an excellent guilty pleasure full of lovely young people: Ryan Phillippe (Flags of Our Fathers (2006)) is criminally hot here, and so is Salma Hayek (30 Rock (2009-13)). Neve Campbell (Scream 4 (2011)) does well, and Mike Myers (Wayne's World (1992)) is phenomenal here in his first dramatic movie role as the cynical, superficial impresario of the seemingly never-ending party.
The development of the story is pretty imperceptible, sometimes nearing banality, elegantly avoiding real crises.
54's original 93 min. cut appears as a celebration of Studio 54, disco and good parties. I ate it raw.
However, the film was envisioned quite differently by its writer-director Mark Christopher (Pizza (2005)), who was forced by Miramax to re-shoot and cut out several parts of his original vision, downgrading gay and sex scenes. A 105 min. director's cut, which includes 30 min. of footage that is not in the original cut, has since been released to acclaim. - I really want to see this version as well!
If you want to read more about how a bad test screening and the infamous Weinstein brothers took apart Christopher's original version, you can do so here.
Related post:
1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Cost: 13 mil. $
Box office: 16.7 mil. $ (US only)
= Big flop, with some uncertainty
[54 made a paltry 99k £ in the UK, which is the only foreign result I've been able to find. - It was a big flop. Had Miramax left it alone, it might have succeeded as a more risqué film, similar to Boogie Nights (1997). - We will never know now.]
What do you think of 54, original and director's cut, depending on what you've seen?
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