I can think of at least three things that 200 Cigarettes shares in common with New Year's Eve (the night on which the movie's action takes place). Both are populated by loud, annoying pinheads, who drink, smoke and complain too much while they chew your ear off. Each make you stop and look back over your life to consider all the time you've wasted in the previous year (specifically, the time wasted watching the movie). And both involve a long, asinine build-up to a pointless, anti-climactic ending which ultimately leaves you feeling empty, used and suicidal.

The plot is laid out thusly. It is New Year's Eve, 1981 and the young and the restless of New York City are out roaming the streets, trying to find love in all the wrong places before the clock strikes midnight. As I'm sure you've seen from the commercials, 200 Cigarettes is jam packed with more familiar faces than an episode of The Love Boat, which makes perfect sense as the story plays out like it was set on the Pacific Princess, except the East Village provides the backdrop for these laugh track-scripted shenanigans instead of scenic Puerto Vallarta.

I use the word "story" sparingly as the movie is actually a loose collection of mini-skits that make Saturday Night Live look like Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In these interminable vignettes, we are given a lethal dosage of masturbatory musings on love and relationships that are about as original and insightful as shouting "Freebird" at a rock concert. You can tell that 200 Cigarettes would like to be the American Graffiti or Diner of the MTV generation, but it only succeeds in being a half-assed, New Wave Happy Days. 200 Cigarettes is more akin to a crappy sitcom than any of those generation-defining films because it lacks the most important element that both these movies had: A soul. Indeed, it feels more like you're watching an episode of Friends that has been adapted for the big screen than an actual piece of cinema.

All of the blame, however, cannot be placed solely on the script, as the acting is equally as bad. Aside from Christina Ricci as a Long Island debu-tramp and Dave Chappelle as a disco cab driver, the remaining performances are laughable. Most of the actors read their lines like they were auditioning for a high school production of "Our Town." Just a few words on the perpetrators:

With regards to the dynamic duo of Ben and Casey Affleck, I haven't seen an acting dynasty this talented, who were both involved in the same project, since the Olsen twins' last video or perhaps Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez's Technicolor classic Men at Work.

Similarly, while I know that some people claim that Courtney Love played a role in the death of her husband Kurt Cobain, there is now conclusive evidence to support charges of her role in a new murder conspiracy: Conspiring to murder the profession of acting as we know it.

Jay Mohr, Paul Rudd and Martha Plimpton: Dense, deranged and on auto-pilot, respectively. I could go on and on about the other performances, but I can't find my Roget's Thesaurus to look up synonyms for banal.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the fact that Elvis Costello and Janeane Garofalo actually make cameos in 200 Cigarettes. I'm a big fan of both and granted their parts are infinitesimally small, but like the Nuremberg Trials all guilty parties must be exposed for their various parts in this hideous crime against humanity.

It should come as no surprise that MTV was involved in the production of this movie, which only further supports my theory that they have the Midas touch, but in reverse. With the exception of Beavis and Butthead (which they had absolutely zero input in creating), everything that MTV touches turns into a steaming pile of dog crap and this is no different.

200 Cigarettes is symptomatic of today's slew of new movies geared toward the audience member who's looking for a McDonald's happy meal-level of entertainment rather than a hearty, nutritious dinner. It's the kind of movie in which the plans for the soundtrack album were probably completed before the script was finished. Granted, music can accentuate the mood of a movie (as Rushmore so amazingly demonstrates), but you get the feeling that the producers chose the exact songs because, for marketing purposes, it's easier to get people into the theater with commercials featuring top-40 hits than with actual snippets of the film. The soundtrack, which features New Wave classics (The Go-Gos, Blondie and The Cars), is a guaranteed 1-2 sucker-punch for every nostalgic dope out there who gets misty for the days when everyone looked like an extra off the Pretty in Pink set. As far as I'm concerned, nostalgia is for idiots and history professors, and I am neither of these. The only thing I'm nostalgic for is the lovely Saturday night I was having before I saw this movie.

In summing up, I would rather listen to the collected works of Judas Priest searching for backward masked messages while watching pay-per-view wrestling specials than ever sit through even a trailer for this soulless cinematic tripe. Barring my recent foreskin restoration surgery, it was the single most painful hour and a half I've experienced in my life.