On B List of Movie Reviews

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Boogie Nights (1997)

Rate: 9
Viewed: 12/02, 5/04, 3/07, 9/25

Boogie
3/07: Welcome, Boogie Nights, to my list of Most Overrated Films of All Time.

Let's begin with the cast. Many try too hard to be cool. Almost every single one of them, Marky Mark, Heather Graham, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, and John C. Reilly, is guilty of this. The way they talk sounds corny.

On the other hand, Burt Reynolds, who has publicly denounced the film despite receiving the first Oscar nomination of his long career, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Luis Guzmán aren't bad. It's because they can act. Thomas Jane and Alfred Molina, who has the best scene, are excellent, too.

There's no plot to speak of. It's just porn, drugs, and loss of their shit. Like Dazed and Confused, there's a flow of 70's coolness with scenes ripped off from Saturday Night Fever, Raging Bull, Mike's Murder, and Goodfellas with a certain camera style that belongs to Brian De Palma's films such as Snake Eyes and Carlito's Way. The porn stuff is what gets people's attention. Hence, the viewers must automatically think Boogie Nights is a great movie because it's American of them to say so.

Most characters aren't interesting. Take Becky Barnett, the black porn actress. Her purpose is uh...? And Scotty? I get it for the umpteenth time that he's fucking stupid and a goddamn pervert. Reed Rothschild brings what to the table besides magic? Rollergirl is the dumbest, most useless character on skates. Amber Waves, who the fuck cares about her problems?

All in all, overdosing on cool, Boogie Nights makes no important statements.

9/25: All right, I'm changing my tune for Boogie Nights.

A fast-paced film given the running time of 155 minutes, the main thing is to look at the performances before everything else. This is the closest anyone has come to the level of Quentin Tarantino's two core films: Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. There's also an Altman quality about it, but most conversations are amusing and childlike to listen to like:

-"Do you work out?"
-"You look like it. What do you squat?"
-"About two."
-"Super, super."
-"What about you? What do you squat?"
-"350."
-"Wow."

Marky Mark is an all-time terrible actor, yet I have to say he did it correctly in Boogie Nights because he's supposed to be playing a bad actor which explains why his character ended up in porn. The funniest scene is when his mother put her hands on his face and mocked him for being stupid, causing him to cry. However, the ending with Marky Mark taking his fake dick out is excessive and serves no purpose. If there's a surprise, his character doesn't die of AIDS since the timeline segues from the 70's to the 80's. Maybe he will if there's a sequel.

I've always known that Burt Reynolds was a capable thespian. He proved it in Deliverance, having been unfairly snubbed for an Oscar. The Academy finally granted him one, and his performance is the best of anyone's in this star-studded cast. Burt Reynolds eventually trashed the film probably because he was embarrassed of being associated with the content.

Many others are excellent and the list is too long, but I have to question the amount of screen time that Don Cheadle got. Why is his character so important? Had it been less, I wouldn't have bothered commenting because everybody else got the same treatment. As a matter of fact, Don Cheadle's role felt like it was meant for Samuel L. Jackson since he was a Paul Thomas Anderson's regular coming from Hard Eight along with John C. Reilly, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Ridgely, Robert Downey, Sr., and Melora Walters, but he surprisingly turned it down. On the other hand, William H. Macy, Ricky Jay, and Jack Wallace are obviously from David Mamet's films.

Overall, there's no story; it's all about the performances and therefore the characters to create a porn family of rejects, setting up some timeless scenes in the vein of Pulp Fiction, merely for shock value. The number one has to be the three guys with Alfred Molina at the house while the Chinese boy is setting off firecrackers.

All in all, the content of Boogie Nights may scare a lot of potential viewers away, but they're missing out on a well-made film.