BY LARRY CARROLL | I can honestly tell you, I can't remember the last time I saw an audience laugh as much at a movie as they did during Deuces Wild. In the theater I was at, there were times when you could barely hear the dialogue over people wheezing and gasping for air. This could very well be the funniest movie of the year, but there's only one problemit's a drama. A gangbanging remembrance of Brooklyn life in the Fifties, the film wants to be Rumblefish, but ends up closer to The Incredible Mr. Limpet.

The title of the film refers to the Deuces, a street gang founded by Leon (Stephen Dorff) after his older brother dies of a drug overdose. The purpose of the Deuces (who, come to think of it, aren't all that wild) is to keep their neighborhood pure for as long as they can - basically they stand around looking tough and making sure that no drugs, guns, or undesirables come onto their "turf". They seem to be effective, for the most part, as things are just as innocent and carefree as any trip to Johnny Rockets would lead you to believe that time period was - oldies blast from the cars, girls wear big smiles and poodle skirts and guys comb back their ducktails with gleeful precision.

But there's trouble in paradise: Marco (Norman Reedus), the man who sold the drugs to Leon's brother, is about to get out of prison, and the Deuces know that he'll be coming back into the neighborhood. Marco is the leader of the Vipers, a rival street gang whose raison d'etre is slightly less noble - they spend their leisurely hours selling drugs, raping women, breaking shop windows, and waving their guns around. Leon is determined to try to keep peace on the Deuces' turf, but his hot-headed little brother Bobby (Brad Renfro) and many of the others think that it's time to stop turning the other cheek every time the Vipers whack it with a tire iron.

Further complicating matters is Fritzy (Matt Dillon), the big-time mob boss who looks down on both the gangs as if they were children. As long as they don't get in his way, Fritzy lets the gangs have their little wars and run their little areas. One day, however, Bobby and a few of the other guys make the mistake of taking on some of Fritzy's goons, which is not a smart move. Now, the Deuces have two gangs out to get them.

The tension goes up another notch when a romance begins between Bobby and Annie (Fairuza Balk), the sister of one of the head Vipers. In true West Side Story fashion, both are told by everyone around them that they must end the relationship, which of course only makes them fall deeper in love.

The premise of the film - a gang standing on the precipice of teenaged innocence, trying to hold back the passage of time in their neighborhood - is a fairly intriguing one. But director Scott Kalvert (The Basketball Diaries) ends up hanging himself with bad dialogue, wooden acting and inconsistencies, despite his attempts to cover it all up with hyper editing and camera tricks. There's no reason for anyone to ever see this movie, unless perhaps it's sandwiched on a tongue-in-cheek triple bill between Plan 9 From Outer Space and Showgirls.

Some of the scenes in this film have such a goofy look to them that you'd swear Kalvert was going out of his way to make a bad movie. In one such instance, a bunch of guys in white t-shirts and jeans walk through a dark alley with various weapons in their hands, and you'd swear the footage was lifted right out of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video. In another, a tough guy stands in front of a burning car and lights up a cigarette, not even flinching as the vehicle dramatically explodes a few feet behind him. I could tell you about the love scene in the pool that looks like something you'd see on Skinemax at 2 in the morning, or I could talk about the thunderbolts that are perfectly placed to accentuate lines of supposedly powerful dialogue and they'd all tell you the same thing; this is a very, very bad movie.

The script is just as low-rent as the direction. The best (worst?) example of this is Annie's mother Wendy (Deborah Harry), whose mental instability has brought her to the point where all she ever thinks about is Christmas. If handled very tenderly, perhaps this could have been a fairly touching device, but instead it ends up more like a running gag. As a result, moments that are trying to be tense are undermined by this crazy woman singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" in the background, or decorating her tree, or asking if Santa Claus is real. A similar confusion of purpose occurs with Fritzy's men, who are tough and scary one minute, and a stereotypical Italian punchline the next. The filmmakers don't know what they want these characters to be, and as a result neither does the audience.

The actors, for the most part, don't help matters much. Frankie Muniz ("Malcolm in the Middle"), playing a kid named Scooch that idolizes the Deuces, seems to have done the research for his character by watching old black and white sitcoms. What you end up getting is Beaver Cleaver riding around on his bike every other scene, screaming, "Aw, c'mon guys, can I come to the rumble too?" Similarly lost is Vincent Pastore ("The Sopranos") as Father Aldo, a priest who is friendly with some of the boys, but whom none of them take seriously enough to pay attention to. Pastore is horribly ineffective in the role that should have been the moral center that held this film together.

The booby prize for acting, however, has to go to Brad Renfro, the worst component of a film that is chock full of bad parts. Renfro's Bobby comes across as a thickheaded bore, which doesn't hold much promise for the film since he's one of the stars. The script demands that Renfro sell the audience on the relationships he has with Annie and with his brother, and he simply fails to do it. The quick-witted Annie seems to be doing laps around Bobby for most of the movie, and Leon also seems to be operating on too high a plane to be bothered by his brother's nonsense.

Perhaps it's just a matter of the abilities of the actors. Dorff and Balk, the only bright spots worth mentioning in the film, both do a fine job with their characters. Dorff gives a finely textured performance as a man who thinks he's doing good, trying to suppress his rage long enough to find a peaceful solution. Balk, also, brings some welcome spark to any scene that she is in. Both actors seem to have been told by the director that they were going to be put in a much better film than this, because they are trying much harder than anyone around them.

Speaking of the supporting actors, this brings up another problem with the film - the casting. I realize that this film has some of the most promising young actors in Hollywood right now - Dorff, Renfro, Reedus, Balthazar Getty (Lost Highway), Max Perlich (Blow), Johnny Knoxville (Big Trouble) - and I also realize that teens in the Fifties all dressed the same and combed their hair likewise. But would it have killed them to cast a blonde or red-haired guy every now and then? In the rumble scenes, or any other when there are more than two guys involved, it's virtually impossible to keep track of who's who. The credits say that James Franco (Spider-man) is in this movie, but I'll be damned if I could find him.

The big money scenes, the rumbles, are edited together in a quick-cut style that aspires to be intense but instead just makes things all the more unrealistic. The director has said in interviews that it was his intention to show the era in an unpolished, gritty way, the way he says things really were. But it shows a lack of confidence when he feels the need to cut together dozens of shots of Dorff punching people, machine-gun style. We keep hearing that Leon is a great brawler - but we never get a chance to judge for ourselves.

Bad editing, unintentionally goofy scenes, poor acting, lousy script - you can pick any of these reasons to explain why Deuces Wild fails, and if those don't suit you, I could give you a dozen more. They say that the Fifties was an age of bliss, and after watching this movie I can see why - those were some downright hysterical times.

GRADE: F