'Boogie Nights': Get Down Tonight

In "Boogie Nights," the world is coked up and ready to party down. The year is 1977. Nightclubs pulsate with the sounds of the Emotions, the Commodores and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. The stars of the day are Cheryl Tiegs, Farrah Fawcett and Frank Serpico. Men think tight pants and platform shoes are a killer combination. Women are playthings to be bargained over with limousine rides and lines of cocaine. And in the kitchen of a California club, 17-year-old dishwasher Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) dreams of joining this instant-thrill nirvana.

He gets his chance when veteran filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) makes him an offer he can’t refuse: to be a star. Horner’s not talking about regular movies. He’s talking about porno flicks, and he hears that Eddie is amply endowed for his line of business.

"I’ve got a feeling," says Horner, "that in those jeans there’s something wonderful just waiting to get out." "Boogie Nights," a stunning and powerful film from 27-year-old writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, does for sleaze (or the adult entertainment industry, as the euphemism goes) what Robert Altman’s "Nashville" did for country music. It turns a subworld into a metaphor for America.

But filmmaker Anderson (whose only previous credit is "Hard Eight") is more animated and propulsive than Altman. "Boogie Nights" has a messy, impulsive vigor that’s hard to resist. The soundtrack (with songs from the Ohio Players to Rick Springfield) is an exhilarating barrage of disco-stomping music. The camera’s a restless, almost freaked-out spirit that swoops, soars, pans and even plunges into swimming pools. As for the characters, they’ve got to be the most colorful alternative people since "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

When Eddie joins Jack Horner’s production group, he becomes part of a bizarre but rather wonderful family, with Horner as the patriarch, porno actress Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) as the surrogate mother and the beautiful, vacant Rollergirl (Heather Graham) as the sort-of sister who gives Eddie the kind of rousing welcome you don’t usually see in conventional family life.

Changing his name to Dirk Diggler, Eddie becomes a rapid success. Not only does he have the goods, he has a naive spirit -- an almost dorky serenity -- that becomes a guiding light for this seamy world of poolside parties, suddenly affordable sports cars, bikini-clad women and easy action.

Wahlberg, heretofore known as Marky Mark or the guy in Calvin Klein’s underpants, is a remarkable centerpiece. He owns this movie. Reynolds, surely aware of his self-satirical presence (he was a big star for much of this 1977-1984 period), is a strong, benevolent force, even if he does look like Kenny Rogers after a rough night.

Moore, an alabaster-skinned princess, has an almost sepulchral magnetism as the quietly tormented den mother, who starts a special bond with Dirk. The other performers are too numerous to mention, but the most memorable moments come from John C. Reilly, as Dirk’s porno-screen partner, Reed Rothchild; Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty J., a chubby production assistant with a barely concealed crush on Dirk; crew member Little Bill (William H. Macy), who spends his time seething at his promiscuous wife’s transgressions; and Don Cheadle as Buck Swope, a quick-change personality who switches his garb and outlook from Midnight Cowboy chic to Rick James slick without a blink.

You know with sickening dread that this smutty Camelot era -- before AIDS, before political correctness, before cocaine lost its false mystique -- cannot possibly continue. The girl who starts bleeding profusely from the nose after she does too much cocaine, the way that Little Bill takes matters into his own hands and the advent of video pornography (corrupting what Jack Horner considers an art), are just a few harbingers of quintessentially American doom. But until the last moment, you can’t stop watching and wondering. In this era of big, dumb star-driven movies, that has become a dismayingly rare commodity.

BOOGIE NIGHTS (R) — Contains graphic sex scenes, nudity, violence, excessive drug use and profanity.