Molly Gunn is a slow-winking, hard-drinking, hyperactive bimbo (Murphy, typecast in the role) living off her dead rock-star father's estate (glimpsed in a photo, he looks a lot like Andy Gibb--or Jesus) when, uh-oh, the trust fund is plundered, leaving Gunn on her own to find a job. Enter little Ray (Fanning, still doing her fairly scary Bette Davis impersonation), a space-alien masquerading as a little girl (the producers of "Taken" were suddenly making a documentary when they cast Fanning as a starchild) whose own father's in a coma and whose mother (Heather Locklear) appears to be some sort of recording agent or something. Molly becomes Ray's nanny, of course, while trapped in the clockwork motions of a ridiculous romance with a budding rock impresario Neal (Jesse Spencer) who can neither act nor sing, making him a perfect fit for today's cadre of teeny-bopper idols. In the end, everyone learns a lot about life and one another, and in the process we learn a little something about ourselves. It occurs to me that between this and I Am Sam, someone should call protective services on behalf of young Fanning.

Uptown Girls is the sort of extended dry-heave that mistakes smoking American Spirit cigarettes for character development, and its audience of pre-pubescent girls for idiots. It refers to aspiring pop star Neal as Morrissey before later comparing him to Jim Morrison, the sort of mistake that might be attributable to a tragic misunderstanding of the difference, but is more likely the result of a raggedy collection of screenwriters (three--none of which, tellingly, had the sense to lobby to have their names removed from the film) engaging in constant rewrites that obscure everything that's been written before. Between a soundtrack that veers jarringly from appalling faux pop to Mozart's Requiem Mass, the picture finds itself likewise divided between slapstick (Murphy's frequent falls sloppily integrated into the film, I guess) and eulogy, ending (as it must) at a strings-tying ballet recital so miserably bungled that it buggers the imagination no one involved had the sense to call "shenanigans."

Dreary and all over the place, Uptown Girls is a sapping, dispiriting picture loaded with unintentional messages and disconnected images. It's an unspeakable film, really, incompetent on so many levels that it actually has greater purpose as a cathartic device for the weary, calling down a rain of catcalls like stones to the proverbial scapegoat. If for no other reason, the spectacle of watching Murphy and Fanning spin around like John Travolta and Karen Lynn Gorney (or Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet), or of Murphy being consistently outperformed not only by every other person sharing a moment with her, but also the stray piece of furniture, provides anyone with a thought in his or her head the opportunity to vent a little frustration at the time that's being sucked, unapologetically, from their finite lives by what seems an endless stream of movies just like this. It isn't that Uptown Girls is awful that attracts ire, understand--rather what galls is the very idea that its creators believe there exists a non-comatose audience gaffed enough for product this bleakly unrefined. At least belief in that cynicism is easier to swallow than the possibility that any of these people genuinely thought at any point that Uptown Girls was actually good.-Walter Chaw