‘GOSSIP” is a remarkably accurate title for a glossy, shallow thriller where not a single scene rings true.
Watching this loathsome concoction, I ended up feeling like the theater critic who complained that he left a musical humming the scenery.
Though I did my best to concentrate on the ever-more-ridiculous story and performances, my attention kept drifting back to the main set – a to-die-for three-story Manhattan loft that’s home to three college students.
I kept wondering exactly who was paying the tab for the place, which would go for at least $2 million on the open market, not including the artfully lavish furniture and what seems like half the Williams-Sonoma catalog – so seductively photographed by Andrezej Bartkowiak, it makes the interiors in “American Psycho” look positively shabby.
Oh, yes, back to the story: Those three obnoxious college students decide, as a class project, to start a rumor – that a famously chaste coed did the nasty with her boyfriend during a party – and track its progress.
Things soon spiral out of control – the woman, who passed out at the party before anything happened, accuses the boyfriend of date rape – as quickly as the movie, which takes a potentially interesting theme and piles one unbelievable scene on top of another.
By the time one of the gossips (James Marsden) confesses ulterior motives (“spreading that rumor wasn’t the nicest thing to do”) to his pals (Lena Headey and Norman Reedus), the movie has left behind any pretense of coherence.
The red-herring-filled screenplay, attributed to Gregory Poirier and Theresa Rebeck, is about as convincing as the film’s (unsuccessful) attempt to pass off Toronto as the Big Apple.
Such seasoned pros as Eric Bogosian, Sharon Lawrence and Edward James Olmos are as terrible as the great-looking, beautifully dressed younger cast members.
Among the latter are Kate Hudson – Goldie Hawn’s real-life daughter – as the rape “victim” and blank-faced “Dawson’s Creek” hunk Joshua Jackson, whose performance as a rich college student here is indistinguishable from his turn as a poor college student in the slightly better teen thriller “The Skulls.”
The inept direction – which can’t begin to sell a “surprise” ending that’s as predictable as it is unbelievable, as well as contradicting numerous earlier scenes – is by Davis Guggenheim, a TV helmer who’s married to Elisabeth Shue.
Were it more skillfully done, the flip treatment “Gossip” gives to rape (and its cynically casual evocation of preppy rapist Alex Kelly) would make it the year’s most offensive movie. Instead, it’s merely the worst.
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GOSSIP Zero stars
Three college students start a nasty rumor for a college research project, but it spins out of control – as quickly as this ineptly thriller becomes progressively unconvincing. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R. At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Murray Hill, others.