Araki and a hard place.

He gave us Totally F***ed Up, but Gregg Araki's latest riff on untamed youth is a tame, straight-aiming comedy

Hey, people! Welcome to the Gregg Araki Museum, on the former sight of Ripley's Believe It or Not! My name is Ecstasy, and I will be your guide. The hallways are dark and twisted, so we ask you not to pick up the torn Day-Glo condom wrappers on the floor that will lead you back to the Jean-Luc Godard souvenir shop should you lose your way. If you feel like belching or vomiting at any time, um, like, whatever. When in Rome.

That bloody head you see as you enter the Teen Apocalypse Wing belonged to the deli owner that Johnathon Schaech blew away in The Doom Generation. To the left, the can of Campbell's tomato soup that Thyme Lewis used to crack Alan Boyce's skull open in Nowhere for selling him bum drugs. Just past, a sentimental favorite, the Mop & Glo cocktail that James Duval swallowed in Totally F***ed Up before drowning in the pool. (Ecstasy sighs.)

On a more tender note, here's the revolver that Mike Dytri cocked in his mouth in The Living End as he f***ed Craig Gilmore. (Ecstasy drools).

The faint of heart are advised against entering the Splendor annex, which has been devoted entirely to the contemplation of Gregg's next picture. Lube your gag reflex, dudes, but he's gone and made (Ecstasy chokes) a screwball comedy. I know, I know, but give him some slack, people. Even totally rad directors get old.

You Nowhere fans will recognize Kathleen Robertson (Araki's real-life girlfriend), looking very Melanie Griffith in blond hair as Veronica, this ex-good girl from suburbia who escapes to Los Angeles to be an actress. She meets two guys when she goes to a club with her token lesbian buddy, Mike (Kelly MacDonald), who is so totally negative you wonder, like, what is this friendship about?

Mike continues to scream and bitch as Veronica falls in love with both Johnathon Schaech, who plays this romantic writer named Abel, and Matt Keeslar, this total piece of hunk merchandise Zed--like he's got a computer bar tattoo on his arm and everything. She can't decide between them, so before long they're shopping and f***ing and living as a threesome.

Like great, more Araki outlaws, right? Yeah, except they behave in all these bourgeois ways. The guys get into this boring hetero antagonistic thing with each other, and Veronica gets all freaked that they won't be able to support her when she gets pregnant. When she runs off to Maui with some earnest movie director named Ernest (Eric Mabius), you can just hear the queer guys in the audience yellin', "Do it! Do it!" at Abel and Zed as they sit alone together on the couch. But they can only hug. Like, hello?

My mother, who is totally retro, says Splendor is just a conventional comedy about unconventional behavior. She says the lovers in the true screwball comedies (she keeps banging the VCR with Bringing Up Baby and Nothing Sacred) are the real outlaws because they wreak havoc without heed or thought to society's mores. They have no choice; it's who they are. Araki's people, even the grossest, are always aware of the line they are crossing.

This ends the Gregg Araki tour, as we know it. (Ecstasy hands in her resignation).

Stuart is a film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.