WHAT? `54' ISN'T SOMEONE'S IQ?

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

The people who made ``54'' surely didn't intend for the movie to prove the old adage that disco sucks. But they prove it nevertheless.

Authentically vapid, this lightheaded gloss on life at the notorious New York nightclub Studio 54 puts viewers into the strobing, throbbing, mirror-balled action. You just don't get any of the sex or drugs, and it soon becomes tediously obvious that the most interesting things about the place were the sex and drugs.

Awkwardly poaching the plot line from ``Saturday Night Fever,'' writer-director Mark Christopher presents the whole decadent scene through the eyes of 19-year-old Shane O'Shea (``I Know What You Did Last Summer's'' Ryan Phillippe), a dumb, attractive Jersey City kid who wants some glamorous fantasy in his working-class life.

When Studio 54's lascivious manager Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) spots sexy Shane among the throngs hoping to get past his velvet rope, he lets him into the club. Once inside, Shane is dazzled: People wear goofy costumes, people wear almost nothing at all, the awful music is loud and insistent, Truman Capote - whoever he is - shows up.

Sure beats Jersey!

Before Shane knows it, he's a bare-chested busboy on the fast track to becoming the be-all and end-all: a shirtless bartender. Women demand his services in the makeout balcony. Although Rubell drools over him, too, the mush-mouthed boss is too busy filling trash bags with skimmed cash and his nervous system with pharmaceuticals to really act on his lechery (for some reason, Studio 54 co-operator Ian Schrager is never so much as mentioned in the film).

Shane is befriended by a young married couple, fellow cleanup crewman Greg (Breckin Meyer) and coat-check girl/aspiring diva Anita (Salma Hayek). Besides providing the film with its only real glamour in the form of Hayek, the duo play surrogates for Shane's uncomprehending family across the Hudson who think he's gone, well, 54th Street on them (they're right).

Along those lines, Shane also manages to get closer to his dream girl Julie (Neve Campbell), a hometown girl and Studio regular who's making it, sort of, as a soap actress. Why, even a coke-snortin' granny (``The Wedding Singer's'' Ellen Dow) takes Shane under her wing.

Could life get any better? If you have no use for intelligent conversation, perhaps not. But of course, no earthly paradise lasts forever, and as the '80s loom, the price of excess, not to mention the IRS, perform their standard duties and declare that the party's over.

Whit Stillman's ``The Last Days of Disco,'' which came out earlier this year, wasn't a very good movie either. But at least it understood that disco was a particularly empty pop culture movement and constantly joshed its naive characters' certainty that they were having the best possible time of their lives making the superficial scene.

``54,'' on the other hand, only finds humor in some of Rubell's arch behavior. Otherwise, it's an article of faith that everyone he allows into his den of iniquity is there for a life-defining experience - like getting introduced to Andy Warhol (really, wasn't everybody?) or dancing to the latest Village People single.

For, um, depth, there's something resembling a class struggle going on here. Rubell likes to make noise about construction workers dancing the hustle with millionaires, celebrities and royalty under his roof. But like everything else in this movie, it's reduced to the most simple-minded expressions, such as snooty Park Avenue twits making fun of Shane's cultural ignorance by calling him a ``gorgeous troglodyte.'' No point, other than the filmmakers' clueless condescension, is made by the follow-up revelation that Shane doesn't know what a troglodyte is, either.

But heck, what did any of that matter? The important thing about Studio 54, at least to the makers of ``54,'' was that, for a glorious couple of years between '60s idealism and '80s greed, a select few of the beautiful and the damned had a great place where they could ignore their cares and dance their brains out.

Which, at least according to this film, should have been illegal, since brains were apparently such a precious, limited commodity at Studio 54.

The facts

The film: ``54'' (R; drug use, sex, nudity, language).

The stars: Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers, Breckin Meyer, Neve Campbell.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Mark Christopher. Produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Dolly Hall and Ira Deutchman. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 29 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two stars