THE LAST SUPPER (33)

Directed by: Stacy Title

Starring: Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Ron Eldard, Ron Perlman

The Pitch: Five graduate students, liberal to a fault, invite folks with objectionable ideas - racists, sexists, neo-Nazis - to dinner, then bump them off.

Theo Sez: Crushingly mediocre, but worth a look both for its intriguing central joke and for the clever way it manages to be all things to all people : those who look on political correctness as a gangrenous boil on the flesh of Society will respond to this tale of liberalism turning into fascism, but viewers more sympathetic to our heroes' beliefs can just as easily think of it as a call to non-violence, a film about the value of debate (and those who couldn't care less either way can take refuge in the facile "twist" ending, allowing the film to hedge its bets). It would probably work a lot better if the protagonists weren't so smug and obnoxious right from the start (for a while you hope - in vain - that killing will turn them into better people, which would at least have been a gratifyingly dark joke), and if it didn't sag so terribly between the first and last big set-piece. It feels like something a self-consciously hip Social Studies teacher might show his class of 16-year-olds, with a discussion afterwards ; all very Relevant, in a sophomoric way.