A surprisingly assured debut from 26-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights charts the career of porn star Eddie Adams, aka 'Dirk Diggler' (Marky Mark, aka Mark Wahlberg).
'Everyone's blessed with one special thing,' says the 17-year-old Adams when we first meet him, and Diggler's gift is a 13-inch appendage which he effortlessly commands at will.
Kicking off in 1977, Boogie Nights is about a spectacularly dysfunctional 'family' devoted to making ludicrously cheap and tawdry pornographic features - initially on film, then later on video. Led by director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), these 'craftsmen' take themselves very seriously, in a hilarious take on the Ed Wood school of film-making.
Boogie Nights is not sexy, though, nor is it really about sex. In fact, the main problem with this admittedly endearing feature is deciding exactly what it has set out to say. Horner, Diggler, 'mother figure' Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), and Rollergirl (Heather Graham) breathe new life into the adage 'home is where the heart is', but that is a shaky premise on which to drag an audience through two hours of sex, cocaine and violence.
In other words, while it is funny, technically well-made and acted (particularly by Wahlberg and Moore) and directed with an assurance beyond Anderson's years or experience, it is a slight piece of work. Even the shock value fades with repetition.
Beneath its superficial charms, Boogie Nights would seem to be bereft of original thought, but that is not to detract from an enjoyable ride to a somewhat flaccid ending.