“Boogie Nights,” Bangor Cinemas, rated R (explicit sex, drug use, language, nudity and violence).

Mainstream critics want to tell you that Paul Thomas Anderson’s film about the late 1970s and early ’80s adult film industry is one of the year’s best. They insist that it rises to cinematic greatness and that it cannot be missed. They say it is epic. They give the film four stars, two enthusiastic thumbs up, and praise the 27-year-old writer-director as a young Martin Scorsese.

I see things a bit differently.

“Boogie Nights” is an insufferably long film that offers a treasure trove of tragic characters who endlessly try our collective patience with their overwhelming weaknesses and unmanageable neuroses. Whether drunk, high on cocaine or performing sex in parking lots for a group of sweaty onlookers, these characters may find themselves in interesting situations, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are interesting as a result. Indeed, they are not, and can only be considered for what they are: a dim group of unlikable losers hellbenton a path of self-destruction.

The praise surrounding “Boogie Nights” is even more curious when you consider that Anderson’s direction is not as “fresh” or as “exciting” as some critics would lead you to believe. Indeed, his film amounts to the year’s best mimic, as he borrows liberally from Scorsese and an army of other directors whom he admires.

For example, the sweeping, lively opening shot of a packed disco mirrors the sweeping, lively copacabana shot from Scorsese’s “Goodfellas.” Later in the film, Anderson borrows from Mikhail Kalatozov’s “I Am Cuba” when his camera sinuously wends its way around the patrons of a house party — only to follow a woman directly into a pool, with the camera ending underwater.

Finally, each time “Boogie’s” star, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), rehearses in front of his dressing room mirror, we are reminded of Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta in “Raging Bull” and his Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver.”

Popular critics are saying that Anderson’s characters are victims of their own greed and hubris. These people want to be stars so badly, and at any cost, that they launch themselves into the sack willingly and with unabashed glee and bravado. They will do anything, absolutely anything, to achieve that shining, vital spotlight known as fame.

Never forced, they freely choose to snort the cocaine that leaves several dead by film’s end, choose to screw up their lives by taking off their clothes and having sex on film, choose to murder and cheat, choose to drop out of school and steal.

That critics are saying these people are victims of an industry they willingly enter suggests more about today’s culture than it does about the free-loving disco era director Anderson is trying to capture. Are we to hold no one accountable for their actions?

None of this is to say that “Boogie Nights” doesn’t have its moments, which it does, particularly in the suspense Anderson builds at film’s end. But for all the time Anderson gives his characters to engage us on film, few ever do. Wahlberg’s Diggler, the 17-year-old who flees his abusive family to find an extended family in porn, may have a sizable gift lodged within his tight pants, but, much like Julianne Moore’s Amber Waves and Heather Graham’s Rollergirl, he never becomes someone we care about.

The film’s one great performance belongs to ’70s icon Burt Reynolds, who shines as blue movie director, Jack Horner, the man who discovers Dirk, directs him to stardom, and then sits back — powerless — as the ’80s usher in the cheaper medium of video, his movie empire is threatened, and Dirk becomes mired in a haze of drugs and violence.

If only we cared.

Grade: C-

Video of the week

“Grosse Pointe Blank,” rated R (for language, violence and adult content).

When Martin Q. Blank (John Cusack) returns to Grosse Pointe, Mich., for his 10-year high school reunion, he looks up his old girlfriend, Debi (Minnie Driver), whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to since he stood her up at their senior prom. In an effort to make amends, Martin drops by Debi’s radio station, where she is a DJ, offers to escort her to the reunion, and, for a moment, it becomes clear that these two are still in love.

Unfortunately for Debi, Martin didn’t leave Grosse Pointe to become a doctor or a lawyer, but an international assassin who is being tracked down by a group of men who want not only Martin dead, but also Debi’s millionaire father.

Co-written by Cusack, “Grosse Pointe Blank” parodies parts of “Pulp Fiction,” feels like the best of Woody Allen, but has its own style and remains coolly preposterous throughout. With Joan Cusack (John’s sister) as Martin’s wild secretary, Alan Arkin as Martin’s cowering shrink, and Dan Aykroyd as a quirky rival assassin who is trying to form a hit-man’s union, this film may be a bit long, but it also is very funny and shouldn’t be missed.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith, a writer and critic who lives in Brewer, reviews films each Monday in the NEWS.