Alan Rudolph has made some decent independent films, but with his last two, the writer/director seems to be headed to a really awful place.  Last fall, he released the unwatchable Breakfast of Champions, and his latest is even worse.  Trixie is so bad, it could challenge Battlefield Earth and Pokemon 2000 as the year’s worst film.

Billed by Rudolph as “screwball noir,” Trixie stars Emily Watson (Angela’s Ashes) as the titular Trixie Zurbo, a wannabe police officer working mall security in Chicago.  To say that her elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top would be a compliment.  Trixie dropped out of school in the fifth grade to take care of her mother, who, like each of her family members (apart from her cop brother), has succumbed to cancer.  She’s soft spoken and seems to have an oral fixation, constantly chomping on either gum or straws.

But Trixie’s lack of education and oral obsession are the least of her problems.  She doesn’t open her mouth too often, but almost every sentence that comes stumbling out of her pie-hole contains a mixed metaphor, or something equally annoying.  Her brother’s about to have a baby, but Trixie doesn’t know if she’s going to be an aunt or an uncle yet.  She threatens to “take the bull by the tail” and accomplish tasks “by hook or by ladder.”  And that was in the first five minutes of the film.  Once you realize you’re not hearing things, it becomes painfully clear that the next hundred-plus minutes will be as entertaining as a trip to the dentist.  Rudolph intends the film to be funny, but instead, it’s just pathetic.

And Trixie isn’t the only dimwitted character in this picture.  Everybody talks as if they’ve just taken several blows to the head, leaving me cringing and shaking my head in disbelief.  This approach to writing dialogue is just a bad, half-baked idea, and a film about the anal electrocutions of mole rats would have made me more comfortable.  Trixie is just dumb, dumb, dumb.

Oh, there’s a story, too, but it’s barely worth mentioning.  Trixie is assigned to work undercover at a casino in Crescent’s Cove.  She’s supposed to catch pickpockets, but instead stumbles onto a sex scandal involving state Senator (Nick Nolte, Simpatico), who is involved in a crooked condo deal with an unscrupulous businessman (Will Patton, Gone in 60 Seconds).  She gets her information from a whacked-out lounge singer played by Nathan Lane (Isn’t She Great).  Even if the atrocious dialogue doesn’t distract you from the story, it still barely makes sense.

While Watson’s character is as annoying as all get out, she does well with a thick Midwestern accent.  You almost feel sorry for her being trapped in such a dead-end project.  Nolte seems to be on quite a horrific role since a great performance in The Thin Red Line and his Oscar-nominated turn in Affliction.  Since then, he’s annoyed me in Simpatico, Nightwatch and Rudolph’s diabolical Champions.

Rudolph’s appalling screenplay is based on a story by John Binder (Honeysuckle Rose), and was produced by Robert Altman (Rudolph worked as an assistant director on Altman’s masterpiece Nashville).  The film also featured performances from borderline stars like Lesley Ann Warren (Twin Falls Idaho), Brittany Murphy (Girl, Interrupted) and Dermot Mulroney (Where the Money Is).

1:57 - for adult language, mild sexual content and violence