Boogie Nights (1997) * * * *

Directed by:  Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Ridgely, Alfred Molina, Heather Graham, Luis Guzman, Ricky Jay, Nina Hartley, Joanna Gleason

Eddie Adams (Wahlberg) doesn't have a great deal of prospects in 1977 Los Angeles.   He's a naive high school dropout with dreams of stardom, but no discernible talent except for his good looks and his giant penis that spellbinds anyone who sees it.   While working as a busboy in a nightclub, porn director Jack Horner (Reynolds) discovers Eddie and invites him to join the world of late 1970's Southern California porn.   After attending a pool party following a fight with his verbally abusive mother, Eddie decides to become a porn actor named Dirk Diggler.    Dirk becomes an instant hit, winning porn award after porn award, and soon wears expensive clothes, drives nice cars, and develops a paralyzing cocaine habit which sends his world into free fall with no net in sight.

The arc of Boogie Nights is inevitable.   We have seen it countless times in movies about show biz, and now we are seeing it done expertly in Paul Thomas Anderson's funny, gritty, moving, and sometimes sad portrayal of Jack and his makeshift family of porn actors, crew members, and friends.
Anderson juggles numerous characters and stories usually in long, unbroken shots in which the camera seems to peek in on this world.   These are real people, with their own problems, hangups, and regrets.  Anderson doesn't condescend or make judgments. 

Porn in the 1970's was shown in theaters, before the advent of home video and cable which would render such theaters moot soon after.   Jack doesn't see himself as a porn director, but a real filmmaker.  He prides himself as an auteur, one who instills real movie production values in between money shots and onscreen promiscuity.   When his distributor suggests shooting his movies on videotape instead of film to cut costs, Jack balks.   He's a filmmaker, damn it!  His live-in lover is his star performer Amber Waves (Moore), a mother figure to Dirk and Jack's other star Rollergirl (Graham), who is never without her roller skates even in sex scenes.    That's the tricky thing about Jack, and why Reynolds' Oscar-nominated performance worked, is that he surely exploits desperate people like Dirk and Rollergirl, but he also loves and cares for them like they're his children.   When he and Dirk have their inevitable falling out, Jack is disappointed and hurt, not because he is losing his meal ticket, but because he despairs that Dirk's drug habit is destroying him.    It is Reynolds' career-best performance and sparked a brief resurgence in his sagging career at the time.

Wahlberg established himself as a lead actor with this role, and he hits notes we hadn't seen before from him.   The other characters include Buck Swope (Cheadle), a member of Jack's stable who strives to be something more, Scotty (Hoffman), a crew member in love with Dirk, Reed Rothchild (Reilly), Dirk's best friend and co-star, Little Bill (Macy), whose wife screws everyone except him which leads to a violent payoff, and The Colonel (Ridgely), Jack's financier whose proclivities for underage lovers leads him to prison.    Each of these characters get a chance to shine, and aren't just standing around waiting for Dirk or Jack to show up again.

Boogie Nights feels its time period just right, down to the clothes, decor, songs, and atmosphere. 
It starts in the pre-AIDS world of 1977 and ends in 1984, when the free love party was about to be stopped in its tracks by the disease.   Anderson is able to keep us glued to the screen for over two and a half hours with hardly a misstep, and that's saying something.    The people behave as if their revelries will never end.   Of course, they do or they will in time, but that doesn't stop them from partying like it's 1979.