200 Cigarettes

Independent filmmakers have been developing a lot of bad habits lately, and the carcinogenic 200 Cigarettes, a lame La Ronde of losers looking for closure on New Year's Eve 1981 in New York, is one of the results. Contempt passing for hipness, clichés passing for cool, glibness for innovation -- not to mention the misogyny and self-loathing from a director and a writer (Risa Bramon Garcia, Shana Larsen) who are women.

What could be in these Cigarettes to draw the talented and seemingly smart people involved? Like Ben Affleck, who plays a hunky bartender drooled over by most of the film's pathetically desperate women until he reveals he's a law student into Reaganomics instead of an "artist" into self-promotion? Or Courtney Love, in the closest thing to a dignified performance, as a self-acknowledged "slut" willing to service roommate Paul Rudd in mourning over his break-up with anal Janeane Garofalo? Or Kate Hudson (a charming ringer for her mother, Goldie Hawn) as a virginal klutz whose humiliations climax with her getting smeared with dog shit?

These and other equally tedious tales interweave through the devices of ubiquitous, wise-ass cabdriver Dave Chappelle, a party thrown by whiny Martha Plimpton, and a morning-after post mortem in which we find out who ends up sleeping with whom, as if we or they cared. That one of those late risers is '80s icon Elvis Costello makes the prognosis for independence and integrity in film or any medium look grim indeed. At the Holiday and Showcase cinemas.

-- Peter Keough