'GLITTER' NO MORE THAN MISDIRECTED VANITY.

Sit through ``Glitter'' and you, too, may feel like checking yourself into a hospital for ``exhaustion.''

Mariah Carey follows in the dubious footsteps of a pathetic plethora of pop stars who believe their life force is so bedazzling they just simply must belong in the movies with this hackneyed, inconsequential yarn of the rags-to-riches rise of a virtuous young singer who has taken the worst life can dish out and still ... yada, yada, yada.

The most perplexing aspect of this relentlessly humdrum vanity project is how flat and lugubrious it all is. Obviously, Carey would've been better served in a featherweight romantic comedy rather than the shallow, wearying sturm und drang smeared across the screen here.

Carey stars as the blitheringly virtuous Billie Frank. In flashbacks we see her wreck of a mother (Valarie Pettiford) drag her, as a child, onstage at the dive at which she sings for a duet; young Billie sings like a sexy Chipmunk (not too unlike her adult incarnation). Billie's soon removed from her mom and placed in an orphanage. There's your deeply resonant back story.

We first see Carey dancing in a club in 1983; this is to suggest that her soul-inflected pop drivel is cutting-edge, rather than hopelessly derivative, as it was when she actually hit the scene in the early '90s.

Within mere minutes, she's given a job singing backup for a deeply untalented song thrush (who deludedly dismisses her supporting vocalists, to their faces, with a blithe, ``They don't matter''). In short order, Billie's recording her own demos, labels are clamoring for her, she has a hit single, the label starts pigeonholing her, she makes a star-making TV appearance, she goes stark raving diva and soon sells out Madison Square Garden. All this, and it's unclear if she has even released an album.

Romantic frisson is provided by Dice (Max Beesley), a presumably hip club DJ who thrusts Billie on her road to stardom. Dice has a borderline shady work ethic as well as a temper as unfocused as ``Glitter's'' narrative, and he bristles bitterly when Billie begins to enjoy the stardom he after all helped her achieve. Call this ``A Star Is Bored.''

Along the way, we see Billie treated as a hunk of meat by a video director: ``Is she white? Is she black? We don't know; she's exotic - I want to see more of her breasts,'' he declares. Those soulless businessmen at the record label aren't interested in her ``deep'' songs (with lyrics like ``She was kind of fragile/And she had a lot to grapple/With,'' you can sort of understand why). Carey's not particularly good in the film, but she's rarely awful. She looks awkward doing something as simple as sniffing a rose, but she's credible enough in a scene in which she ruminates over the fate of her long-estranged mother.

Director Vondie Curtis Hall, an actor who previously showed maybe a smidgen of promise directing the dark comedy ``Gridlock'd,'' does nothing here aside from underscoring pointlessly fancy editing or camerawork with a ``whoosh!'' sound effect. ``Glitter'' utterly, bewilderingly lacks the bounce of Carey's pop stylings; it's too dispiriting to even qualify as inadvertent camp fun. Beware pop divas bearing ``messages.''

``GLITTER''

(Rated PG-13: some sexuality, language and brief violence)

The stars: Mariah Carey, Max Beesley, Da Brat, Tia Texada, Valarie Pettiford, Ann Magnuson, Terrence Howard, Dorian Harewood.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Vondie Curtis Hall. Written by Kate Lanier from a story by Cheryl L. West. Produced by Laurence Mark. Distributed by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: One hour, 44 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: One star.