Cold Creek Manor

Be suspicious of movies that depict New York as a festering pit of danger and grime so incompatible with family life that right-thinking parents must flee with their offspring to the bucolic orchard of presumed tranquility that is small-town living.

Dennis Quaid huffs and puffs, his anxiety rising while he maneuvers an SUV through crowded streets as he carts his kids to school in "Cold Creek Manor." Get a sedan, man, you live in Manhattan.

When a child survives a close call in traffic, Quaid resolves to uproot his wife (Sharon Stone) and children and move upstate to the Land of Really Unfortunate Real Estate Choices.

He finds a bargain fixer-upper manor house that is strangely still full of the previous occupant's stuff, including family pictures.

Cause for concern? Not here, which is the first peal of the bad-movie bells. Either the characters are stupid or the filmmakers are playing the paying customers for saps. And the characters aren't stupid.

Stephen Dorff shows up as an ex-con who used to live in the house. He's cavorting with Juliette Lewis; tarted up in a short skirt, she shows a yard of leg and not an inch of sense.

If you're not napping and, really, that's a possibility, you figure this one out five minutes after Dorff appears; certainly no later than when Quaid visits the family patriarch (an almost unrecognizable Christopher Plummer) in a nursing home. The old man drops a clue that arrives with the subtlety of a cymbal crash in a library.

This dreadful little exercise in ennui doesn't just foreshadow, it virtually holds up cue cards.

At one point, Stone says, "I'm having a hard time relating to this." Hey, girlfriend, welcome to the club.

"Cold Creek Manor" is rated R for scenes of horror violence, occasional use of strong sexual profanity and brief scenes of simulated sex. Running time: 119 minutes.