Second Review: Boogie Nights

The second Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) movie is "Boogie Nights". I believe this movie is pretty famous and I've probably seen it. That said, I really couldn't tell you anything about it prior to watching it for this review.

The movie came out in 1997 just a year after "Hard Eight".  We start in the valley of California in the late 70's. There are too many super famous people in this movie to even list. PTA must have made a lot of friends from 1996 to 1997. Heather Graham is a roller skating waitress and porn star named "rollergirl". Mark Wahlberg starts as a young dishwasher and morphs into a porn star by the name of Dirk Digler . John C. Reilly also stars; I believe he is a PTA staple. We also meet Phillip Seymour Hoffman who had a tiny role in the Hard Eight. I believe he is all of PTA's films but we'll see.

The overwhelming 70's ness of this movie make it entertaining to watch. I particularly enjoyed the onsies that John C. O'reilly wears and the too small outfits of the insecure character flawlessly played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. My favorite scene was John C. Reilly wearing one of his onsies and jumping around in a sound booth as he physically cheers Dirk Digler on in an attempt at recording a music album. A close second was a choreographed disco dance scene. I think it would be so fun to go back to the disco era and do all the dancing without the drugs and booze. If there were some disco workout videos, I'd definitely do them.

The first third of the movie has an upbeat and funny 70's vibe. But as all the characters, and Dirk Digler especially get more successful, a pit of dread started to fill my belly. The outcome of a tragic ending feels imminent in the coke basked 70's and 80's. And Dirk is so likable you don't want to see him fall from grace and suffer. He comes from an asshole family but he's as sweet as can be. He goes into every situation with an open mind, and he minds his p's and q's even while filming a porn scene.

Sure enough, my dread was realized as the remaining five sixths of the last two thirds of the movie were quite painful to watch. At first I liked that they showed the washed up version of doing drugs instead of glorifying drug culture. A scene that felt especially poignant was with Julianne Moore and Rollergirl talking about the things that they are going to do, telling each other they can do anything and then bending their heads down over the coke. Nothing has ever been accomplished from conversations like these. Following this scene the movie just gets grim. In fact, it's so sad I really wanted to turn it off. Maybe it's just me, but watching people destroy themselves with drugs is terribly depressing. The saving grace of the film was the final one sixth. The movie portrays happy endings for all the characters while still keeping them intact as a dysfunctional but happy family. Dirk's ending is the only one that is somewhat left to interpretation but I think we are to believe that he goes back into porn and is successful.

I appreciated this movie. There were more characters than PTA's first film and he did a great job developing most of them. I found Rollergirl a bit one dimensional and I could have done without the side story of cheating wife and husband. There was no point to them and you never find out why she cheats on him or why he puts up with it.

The quirkiness of the movie did not overpower the depressing bits for me. For example, if the first third was playing in a room I'd stay in the room. If the last two thirds were playing, I'd leave the room. It's a good quality film, but it's just not for me. Maybe I'll feel different tomorrow. Boogie Nights was a lot to take in.