Word on the street was that Hollywood's most infamous Chianti-sipping, organ-eating baddie was nervous. After all, with The Bone Collector (just the title gives you the willies, doesn't it?) due for release, his reign as serial killer extraordinaire could have been compromised. Well, I hope that Hannibal Lechter reads this review because I'm here to say that he has nothing to fear. The Bone Collector is one of the most insultingly formulaic pieces of drivel to come down the pike in a long time.

This is the sort of film that studios have high hopes for. Based on a best-selling book, it's packaged out the wazoo with a major celebrity (Denzel Washington), a sexy rising star (Angelina Jolie) and an A-List director (Philip Noyce). Oh, and did I forget to mention that it's about a serial killer? (We Americans do love our sickos, after all.) So what went wrong? Just about everything. From the start, there's a major hint that things may move slowly -- real slowly -- here.

After all, Denzel as former forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme, is paralyzed from the chest down and lives with the possibility that, if a seizure hits, he could "become a vegetable" at any time. Confined to a bed for the entire film, he uses his mouth and finger to operate the complex web of computers that keep him company and are seemingly meant to keep us enthralled. (They don't.) Now, maybe someone missed the boat on this one, but I recall that rule number one in screenwriting is: Keep your hero active. In a book, this might work; on screen, it will kill you. Writer Jeremy Iacone seems to think that showing Lincoln's pained expressions and having him think deep thoughts about things -- like how he plans his "final transition" (i.e., suicide) -- will suffice. It doesn't, and we quickly get bored.

To remedy this problem, Angelina Jolie is introduced as Amelia Donaghy, the reluctant beat cop who has just discovered a dead body and a mystifying crime scene. Amelia's presence in the film simply strains credulity, but does -- in typical Hollywood fashion --open up the potential for an absurd throw-away romance between her and Linc in the third act. Basically, she's here to be Linc's eyes and ears; he's seen a talent in her handling of the crime scene and he needs her. Now, Amelia Donaghy is no Clarisse Starling. Her "dark secret" -- that her cop dad committed suicide and she's afraid the job might push her to do the same -- is flimsy at best and her inability to handle the job just makes her seem weak. Later, of course, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors and, I guess, we're supposed to cheer her gumption. Woop-eee!

If you haven't guessed by now, the real problem here is that everything is by-the-numbers, and ridiculous "numbers" at that. As the story unfolds, we learn that a serial killer is kidnapping victims and killing them in various bizarre manners, having first surgically removed a bone from each of their bodies. Linc and Amelia struggle to piece together the meticulously crafted clues that point to each new victim, but they're too late every time. Slowly, they start to realize that the killer is playing a game of cat-and-mouse (how original!) with them. Does anyone else find it odd that, in the movies, serial killers are always obsessed with leaving the cops clues?

Now, I'm going to give a little something away here because this is the big point of contention for me. Toward the end of the film, Amelia and Linc decipher a clue that leads them to an old book called -- you guessed it -- "The Bone Collector." It seems that the killer has been patterning his crimes on each chapter from this book and leaving clues exactly as shown in drawings contained herein. Now this would be fine, except that about fifteen minutes earlier, we've established that there was a series of unsolved murders in the city where bones from bodies had also been removed -- long before the movie started. So, here's the question: Why were the crimes the same before the killer discovered "The Bone Collector" book? The first crime in the movie corresponds with Chapter One, the second with Chapter Two, etc. So what about all the previous murders? Was there a prequel to the book? And, while we're at it, why is he collecting the bones? We never find out.

This sort of logic lapse pervades the entire film down to the final climactic sequence that is so cheesy it would be more at home in a Cinemax late night movie than in a major studio "blockbuster". (All I have to say is, this movie could be called Dr. Giggles: Part II). The Bone Collector fails on so many levels that it's painful to recount them all. Where it misses the boat most, however, is in its extreme earnestness. It wants so badly to scare us, to gross us out, to keep us on the edge of our seats that it descends into melodrama and relies on little more than surface emotions. Denzel, Jolie et al. do their best with a losing equation, while cinematographer Dean Semler does manage to creep us out on several occasions. Still, a word to Hollywood: It's rare that pretty people and spooky settings alone will win us over. It starts and ends with story, story, story. Somewhere, Hannibal Lechter is laughing out loud.