Boogie Nights stars Burt Reynolds as Jack Horner, a porno flick producer/director and Mark Wahlberg as Eddie Adams, Horner's unbelievably endowed protégé (Watch for that full frontal shot at the end!).  Eddie Adams rechristens himself Dirk Diggler (for obvious reasons) and a star is born.  Boogie Nights tells the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler in a surprisingly tender way.  Dirk starts out as a dishwasher in a club where guys pay him a small fee to get a look at his special gift.  Fleeing from a bad home situation, Dirk accepts his surrogate dad's offer to make him a superstar.  Horner has also taken two other performers under his wing, Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and Rollergirl (Heather Graham) as his surrogate wife and daughter.  Of course, in Boogie Nights, the family that fucks together, stays together.

In chronicling the downward slide of Dirk Diggler into drug addiction and crime, Wahlberg actually does a great job of portraying the antsy mania of a coke head.  And the scene where Diggler hits rock bottom is intense and edgy - a gun battle set to popping Chinese firecrackers and the 80's megahit "Sister Christian" pumping in the background.  Reynolds also deserves kudos for crafting a three-dimensional character that is oddly admirable yet so flawed and compromised.  

Boogie Nights does a wonderful job at catching the flavor of both the 70's disco and porn scene.  From the clothes to the dialogue to the music, this flick is 100% pleather.  The music soundtrack is kick-ass - some great disco anthems and early 80's glam-rock hits that are a blast to listen to in this movie.  Try and catch it at a theater that has THX sound for the enhanced effect.  Finally, this movie also had some very funny scenes - especially when Diggler and his cohorts are filming scenes for their porno series for the James Bondian character "Brock Landers" that made Diggler the winner of several best adult actor awards.  Just a quick word to those who might wonder:  Yes, you see people having sex in this movie but not in the titillating way you might expect from this movie  - this isn't like going to see Deep Throat.