Gloria

When Sharon Stone struts out of prison at the beginning of "Gloria," she leaves with nothing but the hair extensions on her back.

Oh, that and the dress she's wearing, a slutty evening gown of the type that only heavily made-up women can do justice. Stone is "Gloria," a brassy babe who's seen a lot of living and a lot of slutty evening gowns. Right away, she's in trouble: Her mobster boyfriend treats her real bad. Plus, she's saddled with a 7-year-old runaway kid who might just awaken the maternal instinct she's kept hidden her entire, hardscrabble life (weirdly, the movie gives us few hints about her life before prison, like what she did besides swear and wear clingy knits).

"Gloria" is quite a bad movie and not even in interesting ways. There are no howlingly funny lines or ridiculously awful performances (although quite a few actors try to pull off accents they can't pull off, including Stone's Brooklyn dialect and Brit Jeremy Northam's help-me-I-need-a-dialect-coach New Yorkese). Instead, "Gloria" is just dull, with endless scenes of people flying from place to place or driving from place to place or, most agonizingly, walking from place to place.

Actually, it's not just dull. It's dumb, too. The sentimental-masquerading-as-tough script buys into the concept that caring for this boy is just what Gloria needs, despite the fact that her conception of mommyhood is roughly equal to a 4-year-old caring for a doll. And the movie is willing to overlook a number of inconvenient obstacles to Gloria and the kid living happily ever after, including at least two murders, a lack of cash/job skills and Gloria's alarming fondness for platform heels.

All in all, it feels like a movie that turned out badly and that someone tried to salvage. There's tons of re-dubbed dialogue, subplots seem to have been excised and the whole thing has the amateurish, slack feel shared by many of director Sidney Lumet's worst efforts ("Power," "A Stranger Among Us"). But, at rock bottom, his movies have always had a genuine feel for life in New York, and even that is missing in "Gloria," which would have us believe that it's possible to walk up to a New York pay phone and find a phone book still attached to it.