long time ago (the mid-eighties) in a galaxy far, far away (New York City), a star was born (Michael Alig).

And thus, Party Monster dreamily begins its starry-eyed, ketamine-fried, nostalgic musing for a time that happened five minutes ago, lasted all of five minutes, and did nothing to notably change the landscape of music, fashion or art as we know it, even for five minutes. It did, however, provide Geraldo Rivera and his innumerable talk show ilk with a subject other than domestic abuse, trannies and hookers to focus on for one episode, as well as popularize a few new, crappy dance drugs and offer a fast track to fame for talentless poseurs everywhere. Think a half-assed version of Warhol’s Factory of the sixties with nothing coming off the production line. Oh yeah, and someone was killed with a claw hammer, asphyxiation and multiple Drano injections. Well, who wouldn’t be nostalgic for that?

Macaulay Culkin (You know, Home Alone? Yes, that Macaulay Culkin!) stars as Michael Alig, an odd, alienated, but enterprising boy from Indiana who flees to New York in search of the three Fs: Fame, Fabulousness and non-stop Fun. He arrives in NYC without a pot to piss in or a friend to dump it out on, and quickly buddies-up to James St. James (Seth Green, who totally whacks his role out of the park and then runs off with the whole movie), low-level party promoter and original club kid.

Almost overnight, and practically on the back of St. James, Alig becomes a promoter for the Limelight nightclub and the toast of New York’s slimy underbelly with his outlandish weekly gigs, as well as the “outlaw parties” he was perhaps even more famous for. (Outlaw parties were word-of-mouth events where hundreds of absurdly dressed trendies would descend on a random fast food joint or subway station and party until the cops showed up to shut it down.) He also coined the phrase “club kids” giving a name to those who could spin a ball gown out of a trash bag and some glitter and pop or snort any substance you threw their way and keep on dancing.

Alig’s meteoric rise to infamy fuels his maniacal quest to remake club land and all its inhabitants in his own bizarre likeness as he stages one over-the-top event after another, acting as both Peter Pan and Tinkerbell in his insane after-hours Never-Never Land. He gives every new hanger-on and sycophant a name and some dubious lore and then sprinkles them with his own chemical-laced pixie dust. “You’ll be my boyfriend” he declares to DJ Keoki (Wilder Valderrama) as he re-dubs him Superstar DJ Keoki, and “You’ll be my best friend” he tells James St. James, and then decides the burnt-out transvestite Christina (Marilyn Manson, who is hysterical in the role) will be his first official “celebrity”.

Drunk on his own power, Alig then seems to indiscriminately tap every wanna-be that crosses his path with his fickle magic wand of “fame,” provided they meet some need of his. After a tour-stop in Dallas (one of the film’s sillier and all-too-brief better moments), Alig is introduced to Gitsie (an almost invisible Chloe Sevigny) who is dazzled by Alig’s recent appearance on the Geraldo show. “Great name!” he tells her, his “boyfriend” Keoki long since departed due to Alig’s out-of-control drug use, “You can be my new girlfriend.” But perhaps his most fateful meeting comes in the form of a winged admirer named Angel (Wilson Cruz). “You can be the drug dealer” Alig, in need of one, decides.

Like all good party-crashers and parasites, Alig isn’t satisfied until the venue in which he has installed himself is completely in ruins and absolutely no one is having fun anymore. Surrounded by spineless yes-men, who have substance problems he can subsidize with his party favors, Alig’s increasingly destructive behavior goes for the most part unchecked, save for the occasional sane warning from his only real friend, James St. James. Also attempting to steer him back to the path of righteousness, even if only for appearances and legal reasons, is Limelight owner and Alig’s personal mentor Peter Gatien (played by a reptilian, but ultimately one-dimensional Dylan McDermott). Alig, of course, ignores them both.

The party shows no sign of stopping, in fact, until Alig is confronted with now roommate Angel after hoovering up Angel’s entire stash of drugs. “We did all your drugs and now we need some more!” he blithely declares. When Angel attacks him, another of Alig’s roommates/dealers steps in with a hammer, which kicks off an incredibly messy and nearly undiscovered murder. Like every other one of Alig’s out-of-control outlaw parties, the cops finally come in to break this one up.

It’s hard to tell exactly where Party Monster goes wrong, or if in fact, it actually does go wrong. Most of the criticism directed at it seems to cite the utterly vapid and soulless characters without realizing that the real life characters were pretty damn vapid and soulless too. These people literally were what they wore and nothing else, so it’s fairly easy to come out of this one not caring about what happened to any of them. But is that the point?

I went into Party Monster after seeing the documentary of the same name a few years before, thinking it would lend me an edge perspective-wise. I assumed that the portrayals of these characters would probably be as empty as the people themselves were, so knowing that, I’d be one of the ones “in on the joke.” But somehow I didn’t end up feeling that way by the end of it. Instead it felt like a lame re-hashing of the documentary with a lot more of Alig’s scary behavior prior to Angel’s murder left out. (Rent the doc version and note the “Pee Party” and subsequent “Wheel of Hepatitis” and you’ll see what I mean.)

I can’t really figure out where Bailey & Barbato (who, incidentally, directed the documentary version too) were going with this. Party Monster is a glaring example of a film that cannot possibly be made into a mainstream movie, so why did it look like they were trying to pass it off as one? The omission of Alig’s more disgusting and antisocial behavior aside, why did they cut away before any of the gay characters kissed? Is a gay kiss more offensive and less socially acceptable then, say, bashing someone’s head in with a hammer and then injecting the unconscious body with Drano over and over again? Or watching America’s former child sweetheart, Macaulay Culkin, do bump after bump of coke? Come on.

And as for Mac, he was also being flayed and blasphemed in print and on the boards web-wide as part of what was wrong with Party Monster. Once again I was so smug in my knowledge that Alig was every bit as “campy”, “phony” and “over-the-top” in real life as everyone was saying that Culkin played it, so I was sure he probably nailed the part and everyone just wasn’t catching on. Turns out I was wrong again. Instead of being the edgy adult comeback of a former child star, possibly a career-making one that could earn him some cult cred, his performance ends up coming off as lame, inappropriately safe and totally self-conscious.

Party Monster, all in all, does little more than offer the same cheap laughs that say, a clown-car accident would. It’s awful and tragic, but you can’t look away and all the sequins and feathers scattered everywhere make the whole thing just too damn absurd for you to appreciate the magnitude of what’s just happened. If there was anything else they were trying to accomplish here, I certainly couldn’t see what it was. To its credit, the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, either, but it doesn’t offer enough up to make you feel like you’ve really been “entertained” when you leave.

One thing it definitely does do, however, and does well, is provide Seth Green, as original club-kid and Disco Bloodbath author James St. James, a platform (or should I say platform shoes?) to showcase some truly amazing and I think heretofore unnoticed acting chops. Really, Seth Green’s performance will probably be the only thing anyone will be talking about in terms of Party Monster’s redeeming qualities, as the film itself has little else to speak of.

“We don’t do, we just are.” Is the oft-repeated mantra of the club kid, and that about sums up the film perfectly; Party Monster doesn’t do, it just is.