'TAPE' GETS TANGLED BUT NEVER REALLY STICKS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

While he was waiting for the animators to finish work on his fascinating, concurrent release ``Waking Life,'' Richard Linklater took a couple of digital videocams, pal Ethan Hawke and his wife, Uma Thurman, and their friend Robert Sean Leonard, to a motel room for a couple of days and shot ``Tape.''

And the movie feels just like it, too. Based on a one-act play by Stephen Belber and played out in real time in a single location, ``Tape'' has all the earmarks of a time-killing side project. Well-acted but too self-consciously shot, it exudes the forced naturalism filmed plays often do, and Linklater clearly knows it. But he does to death the multiple angles, overwrought camera moves, hectic intercutting and anything else he could think of to make matters appear more cinematic - when the most effective approach probably would have been to just present it all in static master shots and let the actors compose the frames.

Even though he didn't write it, ``Tape'' feels like a Linklater creation. In film after film - ``Slacker,'' ``Dazed and Confused,'' ``Waking,'' the Hawke-starring ``Before Sunrise'' - the director has proven himself the most intelligent chronicler of the 17-to-25-year-old mindset working in movies. This one is no different, except that the characters are a few crucial years older than Linklater's usual inquisitive naifs; too old, on most people's maturation scales, to be fixated on past slights the way at least two of these three still are.

We first meet Hawke's Vince manically jumping around his Lansing, Mich., motor court room, doing drugs and guzzling Rolling Rocks, in anticipation of seeing his childhood buddy Johnny (Leonard). When the other guy shows, we learn that Johnny's a serious independent filmmaker who's come back to town for a festival screening (there's a Lansing Film Festival?) of his latest, uncommercial attempt to tell stories about society's trajectory, as he puts it.

Johnny is soon lecturing Vince, a self-styled volunteer fireman and small-time dope dealer, on his unevolved behavior. He isn't wrong, but Vince clearly resents such comments and, as we soon discover, a whole lot more. Seems that Vince dated Amy (Thurman) through much of high school, but at a graduation party she hooked up with Johnny. Prodded by Vince, Johnny admits that the brief, drunken liaison might not have been entirely consensual on Amy's part.

Then Vince springs his triple surprise: He's secretly taped his rival's alarming confession, Amy's on her way over and she's a district attorney now! Worried and wheedling, Johnny tries to talk his crazy friend out of playing Amy the tape. But once she arrives, events take on an unpredictable life all their own.

Although it's a fully formed playlet, ``Tape'' seems both derivative and indulgent, equal parts actors' exercise and junior-league Harold Pinter. What it doesn't really feel like is a movie, no matter how hard Linklater tries to convince us, and maybe himself, that it is.

``TAPE''

(Rated R: language, drug use)

The stars: Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Richard Linklater. Written by Stephen Belber, based on his play. Produced by Alexis Alexanian, Anne Walker-McBay and Gary Winick. Released by Lions Gate Films.

Running time: One hour, 26 minutes.

Playing: Galleria Stadium 16, Sherman Oaks; Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; NuWilshire, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Two stars.

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Etan Hawke plays a devious drug user who double-crosses a friend in Richard Linklater's ``Tape.''