“Hurlyburly” proves once and for all that when writing a screenplay about coke addicts you shouldn’t be ON coke.

The film sets a new standard in meaningless conversation, which gets old after the first half hour or so.

“Hurlyburly” is the mottled story of three men working in the film industry and living together in the Hollywood hills.

Sean Penn plays Eddie, hopped up and distraught after his roommate, Mickey (Kevin Spacey) absconded with his prospective girlfriend, Darlene (Robin Wright Penn).

The best part of the film is in the first 20 minutes while the two roommates sustain a continuous argument from their house to their cars (via cell phone) to the office to restaurants and eventually home again.

Chazz Palminteri plays Eddie’s friend Phil, a struggling actor whose marriage is in danger of falling apart. Eddie invests the majority of his time and emotion into Phil to the dismay of Artie (Garry Shandling) and the well-measured, wistful contempt of Mickey.

Meg Ryan plays Bonnie, a sexually adventurous stripper who is called in to help take Phil’s mind off of his divorce. Phil responds by throwing her from a moving car during what amounts to the film’s most exciting “action” sequence.

“Hurlyburly” takes a stab at existentialist discourse during several pivotal scenes in which the principal characters are coked to the gills.

Penn’s diatribes come at lightning speed. The overall effect is supposed to be representative of the thought processes of someone on cocaine. While they may be accurate, they are still somewhat difficult, if not actually unpleasant, to watch.

The players attempt to make the most finely delineated semantic distinctions at speeds of up to 120 m.p.h. This kind of drug-induced pedantry could only appeal to the most insanely religious word addict. Feverish would merely begin to describe some of the more relaxed scenes.

A prime example is a scene during which Eddie and Darlene are preparing to eat out, and Eddie asks Darlene if she would prefer a Chinese or French Restaurant. She says that it makes no difference to her because she like each types of food equally.

Eddie goes ballistic for the umpteenth time because he sees this situation as indicative of Darlene’s inability to draw obvious distinctions between disparate things.

He reasons that if she can’t see a difference between Chinese and French restaurants, there isn’t much assurance that she can make distinctions between men. This represents the “big breakup” scene in the film.

Even for those who love dialogue films, this movie is like getting hit in the face with a pillowcase full of dictionaries. Two hours felt like a week, and while the attempts at philosophy are gallant, they are also pointless, convoluted and without end.

The film makes almost no use of silence or sounds other than the actor’s voices. The audience is pummeled almost ceaselessly from start to finish with banter, arguments and verbal fisticuffs.

By the time the film wraps up, nothing more could be desired than time alone in a quiet room with a cold cloth for the forehead.

The ironic thing is that none of the actors can be blamed for poor performances. In fact, this may possibly be the best-acted boring film in well over a decade.

Spacey’s performance is droll, amusing and well-timed. His ability to deliver lines with cutting force is impressive.

Penn’s energy is surprising. Unless he was high on coke when he did these scenes, we should all be impressed. His ability to memorize a large amount of drivel should be commended as well. In spite of everything else, his performance is compelling.

Palminteri is at his intense best, and even Shandling is funny and sympathetic.

But the combination is not enough to dull the pain of two hours of missing time. Even the “Concession Stand-up” guy was more entertaining the tenth time seen than the onslaught of verbal diarrhea this film represents.

It is only worth seeing as an example of how not to do dialogue films.

2 stars out of five

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs.