"Boogie Nights" is a lot of talking, a lot of dialogue that goes nowhere. Not much happens, and if something does happen, it is of little or no consequence for the rest of the movie. A woman overdoses on cocaine at a party - she gets carted away to a hospital and is never seen or heard of again. One character shoots two people and then himself, and that's that. There are two other shootings later, but the survivors just walk away. No police ever show up. One character does land in prison, but for something else that isn't even part of the movie.
While the movie focuses on the Mark Wahlberg character, it does not exclusively follow his rise and fall as a porn actor. It occasionally follows other characters' lives (such as "Buck"'s) for no good reason, and it could have easily been an hour shorter if it hadn't digressed so many times. There are also scenes at the beginning which I suppose are meant to motivate the main character's actions - like his mother yelling at him. But he seemed to have already made up his mind anyway, so the glimpse into his home life doesn't really add much information, and since his parents are never seen again, it is yet another loose thread in a movie that has a lot of them.
There is a lot of drug use and some of the main characters spend quite a lot of time acting drugged out. But except in the case of that one overdose, which is treated as no big deal and not followed up on, the drug use seems to be of little consequence.
At best, this movie feels like a somewhat boring and rather tedious pseudo-documentary of the porn industry in the late 70's and early 80's. It even contains the making of a (pseudo-)documentary of the main character's career! Since a few other reviewers have commented that the documentary aspect of the movie is not very good (i.e. it is far from a true representation of the porn industry), I don't really know what's left of this movie that one might recommend.
While the movie focuses on the Mark Wahlberg character, it does not exclusively follow his rise and fall as a porn actor. It occasionally follows other characters' lives (such as "Buck"'s) for no good reason, and it could have easily been an hour shorter if it hadn't digressed so many times. There are also scenes at the beginning which I suppose are meant to motivate the main character's actions - like his mother yelling at him. But he seemed to have already made up his mind anyway, so the glimpse into his home life doesn't really add much information, and since his parents are never seen again, it is yet another loose thread in a movie that has a lot of them.
There is a lot of drug use and some of the main characters spend quite a lot of time acting drugged out. But except in the case of that one overdose, which is treated as no big deal and not followed up on, the drug use seems to be of little consequence.
At best, this movie feels like a somewhat boring and rather tedious pseudo-documentary of the porn industry in the late 70's and early 80's. It even contains the making of a (pseudo-)documentary of the main character's career! Since a few other reviewers have commented that the documentary aspect of the movie is not very good (i.e. it is far from a true representation of the porn industry), I don't really know what's left of this movie that one might recommend.