In theaters

WICKER PARK, directed by Paul McGuigan, written by Brandon Boyce, 114 minutes, rated PG-13.

“Wicker Park,” the astonishingly stupid, convoluted remake of the 1996 French thriller “L’Appartement,” attempts to press audiences into the grooves of a nonlinear story, one that’s so fractured, it breaks onscreen.

As directed by Paul McGuigan from Brandon Boyce’s script, the movie tries for substance, but it never reaches below the surface. It’s weightless, dim-witted treacle. People run the gamut of emotions here, but with characters so poorly formed, the impact of their tears, fears, worries, rage and joy is only marginally felt.

In the movie, Josh Hartnett is Matt, a successful, up-and-coming young businessman about to leave Chicago for Shanghai. On the verge of being engaged to the tart, smart Rebecca (Jessica Pare), Matt is seemingly on the right track when his world is suddenly derailed by another woman.

Indeed, into his life crosses someone who appears to be the former love of his life, Lisa (Diane Kruger of “Troy”), who mysteriously dumped Matt two years before and then vanished to London without a word.

Without knowing for certain that it’s Lisa he sees rushing from a tony restaurant, Matt is on a mission to find out. Dumping the Shanghai trip, he launches into action, with the movie itself launching back and forth in time in an effort to explain how their relationship went wrong.

Along the way, we meet Matt’s kooky best friend, Luke (Matthew Lillard), and Luke’s creepy girlfriend, Alex (Rose Byrne, also of “Troy”), both of whom add to the considerable (and implausible) twists and turns McGuigan shoehorns into the plot.

“Wicker Park” wants to work by evasion, but it doesn’t generate interest in what it withholds. It wants to keep us off balance and it wants to keep us moderately confused – that it succeeds is no help. And it’s certainly no compliment.

The film’s lack of structure sucks it of momentum. For its first two-thirds, it has no logic, just throwaway, artistic whims by a director who doesn’t have the finesse to see them through. When its story finally does come together in a crowded airport, it’s too late to care. By that point, this disappointing, hollow movie already has been halfway around a world of nowhere.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

THE LADYKILLERS, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, 104 minutes, rated R.

Joel and Ethan Coen’s “The Ladykillers” is a loose remake of the 1955 Ealing original starring Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.

As written by William Rose, that film – a comedy of manners set in London – found Guinness and company using a sweet old lady’s house as a base of operations to pull off a daring heist. In the Coens’ hands, that story becomes a comedy of grotesque manners set in rural Mississippi that follows a group of eccentric crooks using a God-fearing old lady’s house as the base of operations to steal $1.6 million from a riverboat casino.

Just as in the original, the plot turns to getting rid of the woman, here played by the marvelous Irma P. Hall (“Soul Food”) in a great comic performance that’s the highlight of the movie.

The Coens wrote the film and offer several big laughs, some of which are so outrageous – the untimely demise of a dog, the botched holdup of a doughnut shop – they create a buzz.

So does Tom Hanks as the frothy, melodious Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. – the chief crook with a high-end vocabulary who heads this operation. With his pudgy face, dingy white suit and piggish eyes, he recalls Tennessee Williams by way of Foghorn Leghorn. He’s a caricature – as are all of the characters in this movie – and he obviously came to have a good time.

Supporting players include Marlon Wayans as a gun-wielding casino janitor, Tzi Ma as a smoky, former Vietnamese general who sports a Hitler moustache, Ryan Hurst as a hunk of beef who is somehow dumber than he looks, and J.K. Simmons as gung-ho bomb expert Garth Pancake, a man whose love for the mountainous Mountain Girl (Diane Delano) apparently knows few limits.

The movie is filled with great, intentionally repetitive touches, and a gospel soundtrack by T Bone Burnett that could raise the dead. This isn’t the Coens’ best film – that still belongs to “Fargo.” But it is what it is and it does what it does well.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Against the Ropes ? D

Agent Cody Banks 2 ? D

Along Came Polly ? D

Bad Santa ? B+

Barbershop 2: Back in Business ? B+

The Butterfly Effect ? F

Calendar Girls ? B+

Connie and Carla ? B

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights ? D

Dogville ? B

Ella Enchanted ? B

50 First Dates ? C+

Fog of War ? A

The Girl Next Door ? C+

Hellboy ? B

Hidalgo ? C

House of Sand and Fog ? B+

The Human Stain ? D

In America ? A-

Jersey Girl ? C+

Johnson Family Vacation ? D

Kill Bill Vol. 2 ? B

The Ladykillers ? B+

The Last Samurai ? C

Laws of Attraction ? C-

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ? A-

Lost in Translation ? A

The Magdalene Sisters ? A-

Miracle ? B+

Monsieur Ibrahim ? B+

Monster-A

New York Minute ? D

The Passion of the Christ ? B+

The Punisher ? C

Soul Plane ? D

Starsky & Hutch ? D

The Station Agent ? B+

Strangers on a Train ? A+

Swimming Pool ? B+

Sylvia ? B-

Taking Lives ? C

13 Going On 30 ? B

The Triplets of Belleville ? A

The Whole 10 Yards ? F

Twisted ? D-