The movie's most pungent moments suggest the darker side of the convergence of exploitation and snobbery that Shane's kind of stardom entails. Whisked off to a fancy Park Avenue party, he finds himself the butt of sly, condescending humor. Told he's a troglodyte, he initially accepts it as a compliment, not knowing what the word means.

 

Shane is given a tepid love interest, a soap-opera star named Julie Black (Neve Campbell), who also turns out to be from New Jersey and who is also trying to hustle her career into high gear. But Phillippe and Ms. Campbell don't click together, mostly because of Ms. Campbell's hopelessly insipid acting.

 

As Rubell, who calibrated Studio 54's nightly chemistry of celebrities, pretty boys, models, moguls and colorful eccentrics, Meyers turns in a skin-deep caricature that is only a half-step away from a comic spoof.

 

Although there is real pathos in the story of a Brooklyn entrepreneur  who suddenly finds himself a New York social arbiter with all the money, drugs and boys he could possibly want at his fingertips, Meyers plays Rubell as a groggy, grinning casualty of his own success. Rubell's charm, energy, ferocity and desperate eagerness to belong are missing.

 

The movie might have worked had it decided which story it wanted to tell and stuck to its guns. But instead of exploring the hearts and souls of its urban dreamers, it feels like a crudely patched-together collection of notes for a project that got lost on the cutting-room floo