`LAST DAYS OF DISCO' A STILLMAN MISSTEP.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

As if we needed another reason to hate disco, the '70s dance music craze that almost destroyed rock 'n' roll is now responsible for the distinctive filmmaker Whit Stillman's first disappointing movie.

You can't blame it all on the beat, though. ``The Last Days of Disco'' suffers from a lack of creative imagination on Stillman's part, an inability to take the overeducated, super-articulate and ragingly insecure young people who romped through his witty ``Metropolitan'' and ``Barcelona'' to distinctive new places.

To be fair, in one way disco helps salvage ``Disco.'' Some of the film's best lines are wry acknowledgments that the music, misguided snobbishness and empty partymania of the era was all pretty worthless.

One new wrinkle for Stillman here is that he tells the story, at least initially, from female points of view. Alice (``Kids' '' Chloe Sevigny) and Charlotte (``Shooting Fish's'' Kate Beckinsale) are Hampshire College graduates, underpaid co-workers at a New York publishing house and roommates. What they aren't really are very good friends. Alice is a critical intellectual and Charlotte is a deceptively effervescent, subtly vicious put-down artist with an ``Emma''-like flair for misreading social situations.

It's the early '80s, and the attractive young women have no trouble getting past the velvet rope that guards entry to Manhattan's hottest dance spot. It's not quite as easy for their male friends, perhaps because every guy in the movie talks like the same overprivileged proto-yuppie - in other words, like Whit Stillman - and the management evidently prefers a wider range of conversation in its establishment.

Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) is in advertising and, therefore, despised by the club's creepy owner (David Thornton). Since his employment hinges on his ability to show clients a good time, Jimmy is forever trying to sneak gawky out-of-towners in the back door. Jimmy's friend Des (Stillman regular Chris Eigeman) is one of the place's legion of co-managers and sometimes risks his job for his buddy. Des also has a cocaine problem - as opposed to everyone else's coke, um, hobby - and breaks up with women by telling them he just turned gay.

There's also assistant district attorney Josh (Matt Keeslar), who's investigating the club's monetary improprieties and reportedly once went mental in public. Robert Sean Leonard (``Dead Poets Society'') plays a fourth fellow, a longtime crush the picky Alice decides to seduce, to her ongoing regret.

One good thing about that aborted affair, though. Alice gets to make the immortal statement, ``There's something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.'' Only Stillman could set up a one-liner that nonsensical, then have it come back to haunt the speaker.

But despite that and a number of other good quotes, Stillman seems to be spinning his wheels throughout much of ``Disco.'' Erudite and droll as the conversation often is, it has a tedious, repetitive quality and seems oddly out of sync with the hedonistic moves the characters are trying to make.

Alice ends up being the most sympathetic figure. Her mild social awkwardness best represents the movie's central idea, that group dynamics both facilitate and interfere with the inevitable urge to couple up.

As for Beckinsale, one of the brightest new faces in British cinema, she comes off like Parker Posey with better self-control in her first American role. It's a decent comic performance, but the writing that would make Charlotte a complete person just isn't there - a problem shared by most of the characters in ``The Last Days of Disco.''

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Last Days of Disco'' (R; language, drug use, sex).

The stars: Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, Chris Eigeman, Mackenzie Astin, Matt Keeslar, Robert Sean Leonard.

Behind the scenes: Written, directed and produced by Whit Stillman. Released by Gramercy Pictures.

Running time: One hour, 53 minutes.

Playing: AMC Century 14, Century City; Mann Criterion, Santa Monica; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

Our rating: Two and One Half Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Chris Eigeman, left, Kate Beckinsale, Mackenzie Astin, Matt Ross and Chloe Sevigny, from left, are antagonists and friends just ejected from a disco in the early '80s romantic comedy, ``The Last Days of Disco.''