‘Boss’s Daughter’ at bottom of trash heap

In theaters

MY BOSS’S DAUGHTER, directed by David Zucker, written by David Dorfman, 86 minutes, rated PG-13.

The debate between what constitutes a good movie and a bad movie will forever rage on, as any film critic with a published e-mail address can attest. Still, can we agree that it’s a bit dispiriting to see an actor of Terence Stamp’s caliber hanging from a rooftop while beer bottles, rodents, trash and feces slide from the shingles into his mouth?

That’s one of the final scenes in “My Boss’s Daughter,” a numbing, end-of-summer stinker from David Zucker that finds the director of “Airplane,” “Ruthless People” and the “Naked Gun” series slumming it big time on the big screen with a burned-out Farrelly brothers’ sensibility crossed with a “Risky Business” twist.

Based on David Dorfman’s script, Zucker’s nervous, crude comedy has none of the playful, raucous wit for which he’s known. His movie has no shape, no snap, no life, few laughs; it’s just there, as uneasy onscreen as a budding actor on a casting couch, taking up space on celluloid while turning the audience’s brains into hash and good actors like Stamp into public urinals (in one scene, quite literally).

For Stamp, the good news is that he doesn’t have to walk this dog alone. In the lead is the affable Ashton Kutcher, star of “That ’70s Show” and MTV’s “Punk’d,” as Tom Stansfield, a research assistant for a Chicago-based publishing house run by Jack Taylor (Stamp), a cruel man with mean eyes whose daughter, Lisa (Tara Reid), is high atop Tom’s to-do list.

After a series of misunderstandings, Tom finds himself house-sitting for father and daughter, a gig that demands he protect Jack’s multimillion-dollar estate at all costs while also caring for the man’s pet owl, O.J.

Naturally, the inevitable O.J. jokes abound, as do the ongoing misunderstandings, most of which end in some sort of toilet humor with none of the situations going anywhere. Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Tyler Labine and Andy Richter co-star as interlopers brought in to pull a Queen Latifah and bring down the house.

The corruption of movies into TV sitcoms began decades ago, but “My Boss’s Daughter” reminds you how corrosive and grueling an experience it can be to endure. Kutcher will come away bruised by this experience, but not destroyed by it. He’s too young and popular for this sort of thing to stick, and his current tabloid romance with Demi Moore is creating the sort of sensation that tends to overshadow this kind of debauchery.

Stamp won’t be so lucky. Few movie stars are immune to making a quick buck at the box office, but the stink of lining one’s pockets with gold always seems to last longer than the money itself. Watching “Daughter,” you have to wonder why he agreed to do it. Is the humiliation and potential career damage worth a quick million in the bank?

Apparently so.

Grade: BOMB

On video and DVD

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS, directed by Peter Jackson, written by Frances Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair and Jackson, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien, 179 minutes, PG-13.

In “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” the second film in Peter Jackson’s mammoth, $300 million trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1,000-plus-page opus, the quest to save Middle Earth presses on as the Fellowship of the Ring – divided so spectacularly in the last film – comes together again in a story that conspires to keep them apart.

The film, which Jackson co-wrote with Philippa Boyens, Stephen Sinclair and Frances Walsh, is now available in a two-DVD set. It earns its title from the two towers looming high at the film’s start.

In one tower is Sauron the Great, dark lord of Mordor, a mysterious figure responsible for creating the coveted Ring of Power, which its grim bearer, the hobbit Frodo (Elijah Wood), is fighting to bring to the fiery pits of Mount Doom.

Only there, where the ring was originally forged in a gathering of evil and hate, can its seductive powers of world domination be extinguished and the ring itself fully destroyed.

In the second tower is the wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee), Sauron’s powerful ally, a vicious beast who has created an army so great, it promises to obliterate the Fellowship and crush all of civilization in the process.

Shot in Jackson’s native New Zealand, the movie improves on the first installation, seamlessly blurring the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated as Jackson mounts some of the most thrilling reenactments of war shot for a movie since D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance” or Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran.”

Particularly memorable is the character Gollum, the former hobbit whose lust for the Ring of Power has turned him into a shrunken, bipolar freak, a monster divided between the good and evil boiling within himself who reluctantly agrees to take Frodo and Sam (Sean Astin) to Mordor and Mount Doom.

Completely computer-animated, Gollum, voiced by Andy Serkis, is a feat of showmanship. When he’s onscreen, there is nowhere else to look but in his wide, troubled eyes, which reflect all the drama, danger and intensity of Frodo’s quest and which give this second film in the series the emotional jolt it needs.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived on RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.