G

Cherot (who also co-wrote the script with Charles E. Drew Jr.) has made that rare hip-hop movie that doesn't fetishize lurid ghetto clichés.

"The Great Gatsby" was famously bungled in the pulseless 1974 movie with Robert Redford. G, which updates the story with an African-American cast, is another strikeout, further destroying F. Scott Fitzgerald's film batting average.

If the movie's not as bad as it sounds, it's not all that great, either.

Unable to embrace the world he's seeking to depict, Cherot is left with a lifeless shell, a movie so preoccupied with being noble that it forgets to be interesting. The problem with G is not that it's unbelievable, it's just boring.

For a film about shimmering surfaces and the glittering allure of the superficial, G boasts a depressingly flat, undistinguished visual style, and whenever Bill Conti's score reaches for rarified, elegant romance, it instead suggests the dewy earnestness of a feminine hygiene commercial.

It's an ugly affair overall, but at least you can say you've never seen such beautiful shirts.

This poorly acted, directed and written (but slick-looking) vanity project was produced by Andrew Lauren (Ralph's son also ineptly plays G's major-domo) and shot at least four years ago.