Oscar contenders are beginning to surface on theatrical screens now, but don't expect any nods for The Human Stain. Robert Benton's adaptation of Phillip Roth's novel includes a quartet of big name stars that slog through a sloppy melodramatic script that fails to develop empathy for any of its cardboard characters. I haven't read anything by Roth since Portnoy's Complaint, but this script only remotely resembles his irreverent sense of humor with references to "cocksucking" and a metaphor of "Achilles on Viagra." It's hard to believe that Roth's original concept would so cheaply twist its plot over its advertised dark "secret," or would fashion such lifeless characters. Alas, Nicolas Meyer doesn't come close his three successful Star Trek movies when adapting this piece of cheese. I do chuckle at thoughts of casting William Shatner for the lead—the age factor remains, along with references to wooing women, and it certainly would have been a helluva lot more fun. But the tone here is dead serious, matching its lifeless presentation.

Set at a prestigious Massachusetts college during the Clinton-Lewinski impeachment proceedings, Anthony Hopkins plays esteemed elderly classics professor Coleman Silk, who angrily resigns after mousy Athena College administrative reactionaries question his inadvertent use of a perceived racial epithet. This shocks his wife (Phyllis Newman), who immediately drops dead—paralleling a later scene (in flashback) where Coleman's father keels over from a heart attack about one minute after first meeting him on screen. We are later introduced to three tins of cremated ashes of young kids that have tragically died in a fire, but all these undeveloped characters only appear as barren plot devices. Unfortunately, none of the main characters ever come to life either.

Shaken by his wife's death and irate at the college's timorous political correctness, Silk seeks reclusive writer Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise) to tell his story and ends up befriending the younger man over gin rummy conversations. This provides opportunities for narrative flashbacks and one of the film's few working scenes—where a surprisingly lithe Hopkins joyfully invites Sinise to dance cheek to cheek before revealing how he's fallen for 34-year old Faunia Farley (Nicole Kidman), a lonely divorcee working at the post office and on the college's custodial staff. She has her own secrets and issues, but the film strives hard to preserve its major coup de grace for Silk's revelation that will have many in the audience shaking their heads in disbelief at its implausibility and at Hopkins' miscasting. I'll refrain from revealing the "secret" here, but one blatant literary devise involves Kidman gazing intimately at her former pet bird, softly describing it as "A crow that doesn't know how to be a crow."

We could say about as much for The Human Stain. It's a film that doesn't know how to be a film. Structurally, it's a complete mess that begins with a car crash that immediately goes back in time with so many false leads and misfires that make it seem a helluva lot longer than its 106 minute running time. After the expected ending bookend with the car crash, the filmmakers stretch out the narrative with a pointed ice fishing meeting with Faunia's former husband Lester (Ed Harris) that leads absolutely no where. Learning the "secrets" of each major player only makes you wonder how such banality could have ever translated into a best selling book. Roth must have crafted a much better work in his medium!

With such an all-star cast, you'd expect much better work. Of the principles, Kidman does the best with limited material, convincingly conveying a trailer trash mentality as she works to seduce the much older Hopkins and then displaying anguish after the deed. Hopkins flashes his charms effectively enough, but often sleepwalks through his parts with forlorn outtakes of Hannibal Lector rehearsals while Ed Harris never does get into his shallowly scripted character, resorting to one of his screaming Pollock binges at one point. Given the credentials of the cast, The Human Stain greatly disappoints primarily due to non-visionary filmmaking with one of the most insipid screenplays of the year. In that sense, it does match the tenor of the Clinton impeachment playing in the background since that all turned out to be a $60 million dollar boondoggle that took us to nothing of significance. At least Shatner would have given us some laughs.