Eddie is now a first-class superstar who can afford everything his heart desires, from sportscar to the most modern apartment.

Then come the 80s, hard times for Jack and Eddie's business partners. Eddie's drug-taking has adverse effects on his sexual prowess, dents his self-awareness and makes him irritable. Jack has already found a new up-and-coming star and throws Eddie out.

It is not too long before Eddie finds himself on the game, while Jack is at the end of his creative talents, and is having to cope with a new medium called video. But Jack and Eddie's freefall is not yet over...
 

• Hollywood has discovered that a lot of money and attention can be gained from that which is normally cut out of films and is subject, in the USA, to more taboos than any form of violence: sex. True to form, Hollywood does not rethink its innovation-less inhibition when it comes to the explicit portrayal of the human body, but relies on being suggestive. There is still nothing between prudishness and pornography in America. The story of Larry Flint, the real-life multi-millionaire publisher of a girlie magazine, and Private Parts, about the career of probably the most vulgar cult radio DJ in America, Howard Stern, are still being talked about; and now Hollywood are making a (fictitious) story of the industry in neighbouring San Fernando Valley, whose films usually copy the mega-hits of Tinseltown.

Social objections on the subject of pornography in the modern world are once more left untouched: either you are reactionary and inhibited, or you are ready for any depravity. But let us take heart, give free reign to our political incorrectness and take Boogie Nights as it is.

By American standards this is an unusually open-hearted comedy which, sometimes frivolously, sometimes downright dramatically, draws on the good old days of the sex industry. A current debate is put into a new frame, platform shoes and horrible flares add to the entertainment, and there are some good tips for your next rave.

The transition from the carefree 70s to the tough 80s is highly convincingly portrayed and reaches its fulminating climax in the scenes where Eddie is beaten up by gay-bashers and Jack, following a disasterous publicity coup attacks a "film critic".

Boogie Nights certainly plumbs no depths, but is able to entertain consistently even throughout its epic two-and-a-half-hour running time. As long as you can look uncritically at the porn industry.

There is of course a homo in the film crew, who, surprise surprise, fancies the male sex object in front of the camera. Eddie, alias Dirk, is very 90s and understanding in his rejection, but this gay man just won't be told. The innocent hetero, the horny homo – another "new" insight, which is in fact an old film cliché. This little intrusion at least should have ended on the cutting-room floor.

In the third gay strand to this film we welcome Alfred Molina, after his starring gay role in Nervous Energy, in a cameo role as a very gay, very psychotic drugs baron. This scene – which cannot even be described as short – is alone worth almost the price of a ticket.

Filmdata:

Official link: http://www.boogie-nights.com/