200 Cigarettes

It’s New Year’s Eve 1981 in downtown New York City, and a gaggle of revelers hope to get lucky the way revelers were able to before AIDS and power neckties spoiled the fun: Everyone’s maneuvering to not wake up alone, and time ticks by in a procession of cigarettes lit or stubbed out. A hip collection of somebodies participate in this curiously strident, out-of-control, unfunny comedy — a credit to the clout of casting director Risa Bramon Garcia, who makes her unsteady feature-directorial debut with far greater resources than those available to the average rookie filmmaker.

Brothers Ben and Casey Affleck, Janeane Garofalo, Martha Plimpton, Christina Ricci, Paul Rudd, and Dave Chappelle are among the talents who either squander their gifts with crude performances or are given such crudely devised roles there’s no hope of emerging unscathed. Each is humiliated, but some characters are brought lower than others — particularly Kate Hudson (daughter of Goldie Hawn, with similar soft eagerness) as a recently deflowered uptown girl who slips haplessly in dog feces. At least Courtney Love, playing the very antithesis of a virgin, comes out on top: She offers more exciting personal magnetism than this pooped party knows what to do with.