Roger Avary's adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel of pretty people doing ugly things clocks in at a lung-crushingly painful 93-hour running time.

Okay, I made that up. The film's actual running time is about 110 minutes. It only feels like 93 hours.

You know you're in deep shit right off the bat when, after a bit of unpleasantness unfolds at a college party, the film goes into reverse to bring us back to where we began, only to discharge another unpleasant sequence. And then - you guessed it - the flick reverses once again, bringing us to yet more nastiness. And after that, the entire opening credits sequence plays in reverse, and the effect is even more clever and cool than the first two times we were subjected to it.

Our main characters are Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek), Lauren Hynde (the extraordinarily cute Shannyn Sossamon), and Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder). Of course, calling them "characters" is to give the film too much credit - they're all nothing more than crudely-drawn sketches, skeletons to hang a thin fabric of disaffected hipness upon. The "rules of attraction," needless to say, conspire against these young lovelies - Sean digs the virginal Lauren, who is saving herself for the globe-trotting Victor (Kip Pardue), while Paul is crazy about Sean, etc. etc.

Sean, the biggest ass of the bunch, is Camden College's favorite drug dealer, a plot device that seems to exist solely to give the story some sense of urgency (Sean owes his coke-crazed, gun-wielding connection a bunch of money). Other than that, we're simply force-fed a never-ending parade of stunningly uninteresting scenes wherein our gorgeous leads prove themselves to be a shallow, unlikable group of jerk-offs (literally, as we see over and over again - my, is this film edgy!).

And therein lies my biggest problem with The Rules of Attraction: some filmmakers can do "edgy and hip" and still deliver story and substance (Fincher's Fight Club springs to mind); others are edgy and hip simply for the sake of being so. Sadly, Avary falls into the latter category, hoping to dazzle us with his stylish but utterly useless camera and editing tricks - not to mention ladling on a toilet-bowl full of in-your-face grotesquerie (the same sort of "shocking" - and invariably dull - cinematic abuse that cripples some of Abel Ferrara's movies).

As they forge onward through the muck, the actors do the best they can with what they're given - and while they spout some well-written, snappy dialogue now and then, they never really say anything. However, several of the secondary characters are so over-played it's as if their scenes were spliced in from a David Lynch movie, destroying whatever credibility Avary might have generated.

When the film finally runs headlong into its predictably-clever brick wall of an ending, we're treated once more to a display of the extent of Avary's vision: the closing credits run backwards.

The Lion's Gate DVD is every bit as pretty as the movie's cast, delivering a sharp 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer and Dolby 2.0 surround. There are six "revolving door" commentaries featuring numerous members of the cast and crew, along with porn star/hedgehog Ron Jeremy. Another commentary features "mystery guest" Carrot Top, for some inexplicable reason.

Other extras include the theatrical trailer, unrated and rated promo trailers, and a 26-minute Sundance Channel documentary on the making of the film. Unfortunately, after suffering through the film itself, I didn't have the heart to struggle through the extras.

Things I liked about the movie? Shannyn Sossamon and a cameo by Paul Williams (who seems to be portraying Bud Cort). Ultimately, though, watching The Rules of Attraction is like being trapped in a disco with all the worst aspects of French cinema - and they won't stop talking about themselves.