I must now pay my duty to future viewers of Boogie Nights to tell them that just at the film-end the "hero" (is that the word?) admiring himself in a mirror, drops his pants (no underpants) and we see, in what is obviously a Body Double shot (the mirror image is seen from throat down) a long long long penis. The hero has boasted he has thirteen inches and the odd tuber you see onscreen looks something like that long.

Very discouraging. An odd sad contrast to the photos of Marky Mark from the February 1992 issue of Interview where his penis, though unexposed, is given a wonderful exposure inside his boxer drawers and he presses the material against his skin to allow the viewer to enjoy him as he enjoys himself.

The body of Marky Mark who has now assumed and used the name of Mark Wahlberg has changed in these five years and in the film he not only looks younger, he's less muscular and plays a character who has Problems.

His chief problem, as the film begins, is a possessive mother and her strange anger-scene with her teenage son takes fire. She's played by Joanna Gleason but the film does no follow-up. If the script made sense--it doesn't--he'd have to Fall and come Home and she'd realize she'd been too harsh and help him get back Up (i.e. like repentant young woman in "Valley of the Dolls"). But she never reappears and there isn't even one of those sad I-am-trying- to-get-back-home phone falls like the one Bette Midler did on the edge of the football field in The Rose.

But The Rose was a good film, as was The Full Monty and this is a bad film.

Bad bad bad bad bad.

My mother -- may her memory serve for a blessing -- used to say to me " Leo --" (that's my name, Leo) "Leo if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything." Of course she never took her own advice. She was a born backbiter, but I do wish to list the two other short/good scenes in this long (over 120 minute) film:

Early in the film, before he's Fighting With His Mother, the "hero", who works as a dishwasher in a local nightclub is approached by Jack Horner ("he put in his thumb/And pulled out a plum") in the kitchen since Horner, feels this very young man has Talent. The youth, with the innocence of one born in Los Angeles, thinking the man just wants sex with him and offers him – an opening offering of $10 show his penis and $20 to jack off. Oh. Forgot. This is 1967 when prices were lower.

That's a nice scene, having something of Reality, almost touching. It's less than a minute long.

The other "scene" really a sequence is having the hero and several of the principals boogie--dance--not the African- American boogie-woogie (which was 40s bop) but 60s disco. And Wahlberg, who was once Marky Mark and didn't boogie on stage but only displayed his Talent, dances and dances well, as do the other principals.

And it's nice, as nice, even nicer than seeing John Travolta dance again in Pulp Fiction and Michael.

But it's over. Very quickly. Two minutes at most.

That's five minutes of a long silly leading-nowhere film about the porn industry in which we see them, drink, have sex (in an R- rated discreet non-X way), take too much coke and get into Trouble.

The hero spends all his money and, though, his career in porn takes off with his development of a persona something like James Bond, he's unable to finance a demo tape series of film with it-- of his singing of his best friend's song ( his Best Friend also being, like him, a Porn Star).

He falls into Crime and there there's an extended sequence when he's involved in an unsuccessful holdup that has moments (less than a minute) when you think Comedy is rearing its head.

Forget it.

Meanwhile there's trouble among his set. One member of the set, a gay man (the only gay one) played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is in love with Wahlberg, who rejects him, causing the man (who drinks a lot) to fall into a Deep Depression. Another man kills his wife who's taken to having sexual intercourse with other men at parties the two are at. This man also kills himself. And then one of the female porn stars loses her legal battle for partial custody of her son due to her cocaine history. Trouble trouble trouble. It makes one want to give up drink-drugs-sex (especially commercial sex) and settle down to bridge and masturbation.

But if you don't know that drink and dope will make you lose money and court cases this is the film for you.

There's a fake ending making no sense where the hero goes to his director and asks his aid in Coming Back and though the porn director has already found another younger man since in the years this takes the baby-faced hero is supposed to have gotten Older, he takes the fallen star under his wing. Burt Reynolds as Mother Hen? Get real!

Two amazing things about this film. None of the publicity mentions Mark Wahlberg's career as Marky Mark! The second amazing thing: not one but about ten film critics have LOVED the film: Robert Ebert; Joe Morgenstern (Wall Street Journal); Richard Corliss (Time); Peter Travers (Rolling Stone); Owen Gleiberman (Entertainment Weekly); Kenneth Tynan (The Los Angeles Times); Janet Maslin (New York Times) -- and - my favorite film critic Stanley Kauffmann (New Republic).

The story makes no sense. Burt Reynolds as the porn director is wasted.

This viewer was, literally, bored to tears by the film. The two subjects of the film, porn film and coke addiction, are of interest to him. He read TWELVE INCHES by John Holmes (on whose sad life the film was, in theory partially based). He's interviewed and liked porn star/producer Jack Wrangler and lived in New York City in the 60s and 70s when Coke, Quaaludes and heroin ruled and everyone smoked pot and hash.

There are really dramas out there.

Not here.