When Whit Stillman's excellent The Last Days Of Disco was released earlier this summer, some critics complained that the film wasn't true to the spirit of disco—that it was too tasteful, too restrained, and too intellectual. Mark Christopher's shallow, tacky, monotonous 54, on the other hand, embodies much of what led to people to despise disco in the first place. 54 stars male starlet Ryan Phillippe as a stunningly handsome palooka from New Jersey who dreams of one day living the high life in New York. Several scenes later, he is living the high life in New York, working as a busboy in Studio 54, the legendary nightclub where ridiculously attractive normal people could fulfill their lifelong dream of taking bad drugs and having bad, empty sex with minor celebrities. Phillippe works at 54 alongside fellow meathead Breckin Meyer and Meyer's wife, hat-check girl and aspiring diva Salma Hayek. Phillippe also finds time to pine for a pretty soap-opera star (Neve Campbell), befriend an eccentric old woman (Ellen Dow), and rub shoulders with Studio 54 kingpin Steve Rubell (Mike Myers). Christopher has made a handful of underground queer short films before 54, but for his feature-film debut, he inexplicably chose to make a movie about the omnisexual debauchery of Studio 54 that's surprisingly white-bread and conventional. For a film that dwells so much on surfaces, 54 is ugly, cheap-looking, populated by uninteresting characters, and loaded with the simplistic, moralizing dialogue of a bad TV movie. As the film's innocent-run-amok, Phillippe is a bland, uncharismatic protagonist. But then, just about every supporting character and subplot here is unnecessary and uninteresting. The film's sole redeeming facet is Mike Myers' rich, multilayered performance as Rubell: Simultaneously repulsive and charming, hedonistic and oddly paternal, Myers steals every scene he's in. It's a great performance that deserves to be in a much better film.