Dawson's creep: the sexy, sex-obsessed students in The Rules of Attraction, including James Van Der Beek, may be unlikable, but the film can be fiendishly witty.

The Rules of Attraction * Written and directed by Roger Avary * Starring James Van Der Beek, Ian Somerhalder, and Shannyn Sossamon * Lions Gate Films

Mr. Snobby Boots Cultural Critic took a certain pride in the fact that he had never read a word of Bret Easton Ellis nor watched more than 10 minutes of Dawson's Creek. Snobby Boots felt confident that with a little careful career planning, he could go to his grave with the status quo intact. Then he saw James Van Der Beek of Dawson's in Roger Avary's adaptation of Ellis's The Rules of Attraction and sighed, "I should have known better."

Bret Easton Ellis writes about people who should know better. The students, teachers, and townies who buzz around his prototypical small New England college in The Rules of Attraction have special access to the kinds of human truths that only art can reveal, but they squander that knowledge for the cheap thrill. A professor wallows in Verdi while manipulating a student into giving him a blow job. A movie geek references silent-screen star Clara Bow at a party to impress a girl, whom he then films getting date-raped minutes later. A drug-dealing student rips off a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude from a friend but probably uses it as a lap tray for snorting lines.

The Marquez moocher is Camden upperclassman Sean Bateman (Van Der Beek), kid brother to the eponymous corporate shark of Ellis's American Psycho. As bad apples go, Sean has apparently fallen close to the tree. If he lacks Patrick Bateman's talent for money, he shares with him a brutal disregard for the feelings of others and a hedonist's slavishness to his own animal urges. "I'm hungry" and "I need to get laid, then I need to find more pot" are his gorilla mantras. After taking a dump (which he seems to enjoy more than sex), he checks the toilet tissue to see what a fine job he's done.

For reasons that only a fool for love can appreciate--and that the irresistibly indifferent Van Der Beek helps us understand--everyone wants to get into this creep's pants. Knowing that, Sean uses and tosses away his admirers like so much Charmin. Before The Rules of Attraction reaches its chilly climax, Sean will wreak havoc with a driven young woman who sends him anonymous love letters, a reckless gay student named Paul (a drolly effete Ian Somerhalder) who all but throws himself in Sean's lap, and the romantically myopic Lauren (the engaging Shannyn Sossamon).

Director-writer Avary maps their self-destructive paths with a clever deployment of split screen and reverse chronology that honors his innovative writing on Pulp Fiction. He can be fiendishly witty, as in the film's best segment: a sped-up video tour of Europe in which a student (Kip Pardue) enumerates his sexual conquests with breathless bravado.

Much of The Rules of Attraction is so incisive and sharp that the lapses feel especially out of joint: the maniacally violent Boogie Nights-ish drug lair; the cliched, pill-popping society parents (played by Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz); the now-obligatory Tom Cruise underwear dance to express youthful homoerotic exuberance; and the American Pie 2 take on college life, where the parties are seemingly wall-to-wall, no one does any schoolwork, and enlightened multicultural admissions policies have given way to open enrollment for slutty blond babes. This is nothing like any small New England college Mr. Snobby Boots Cultural Critic ever attended. Considering the intelligence of so much of tiffs film, Ellis and his Hollywood interpreter should know better.

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.