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Grade: D-

Verdict: Don't waste your breath or time.

Details: Starring Lena Headey and James Marsden. Rated R for sexual content, including language, and for brief violence. 1 hour, 30 minutes.

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Review: The less said, the better.

"Gossip" isn't really worth talking about. The latest cynical bid for teenagers' pocket change, it features the requisite hot WB star (Joshua Jackson) backed by hunky-pretty co-stars. They play students enrolled in some vaguely Northeastern college (actually Toronto), where the curriculum consists of partying, having sex and changing into new clothes.

Lena Headey (perky but fatally bland) plays Jones, who rooms with fellow students Travis (Norman Reedus), a geeky, creepy art student, and Derrick (James Marsden), the spoiled rich boy whose enormous loft space that they share could house a fleet of Cessnas.

In their journalism class, their professor (Eric Bogosian, gruffly overacting) lectures on the fine line between news and gossip. So Jones comes up with a sneaky way to fulfill a class assignment: She and her roomies plant the rumor that snooty, chaste rich girl Naomi (Kate Hudson) has gone all the way with her beau Beau (Jackson) during a late-night party. In no time, natch, this slander has snowballed into whispered tales that include kinky sex and rubber panties.

Naomi ups the ante when she hears the rumors herself; unable to remember what exactly did happen that night, she charges Beau with rape. Angry arguments and plot twists follow, until finally "Gossip" heads toward a surprise ending too elaborate and implausible to satisfy.

The movie wants to be a mixture of "Dangerous Liaisons," "Shallow Grave" and "Disclosure," but it's tin-eared and shallow. It makes last year's shrill date-rape movie "Body Shots" seem a work of sensitivity and depth. Worse, all the characters are unlikable, especially swaggering, oversexed Derrick and the geeky, creepy Travis.

TV veteran David Guggenheim ("ER," "Party of Five") makes a showy feature film debut in all the wrong ways. Instead of delivering intriguing characters or suspense, he seems more interested in moody lighting and the tchotchkes crammed into Derrick's swank loft.

As a footnote, "Gossip" was originally developed as a project for Joel Schumacher, known for his three-strikes-you're-out trio of previous movies (the stinky "Batman & Robin," "Eight Millimeter" and "Flawless"). Any aspiring director should know better than to accept a Schumacher hand-me-down.

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service

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