Star-producer-Twitterer Ashton Kutcher has said he wanted Spread to feel like a Hal Ashby film -- apparently in the belief Ashby directed Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo.

Surely, he wasn't inviting comparisons to 1975's Shampoo, which Ashby directed and which starred Warren Beatty as a womanizing Beverly Hills hairdresser, was he?

Because while that film is a marvel of penetrating intelligence, Spread -- a vapid vanity project that swaddles its smugness in the guise of profundity -- only has another kind of penetration on its mind.

Never much of an actor, Kutcher stars as Nikki, a Los Angeles bottom-feeder who trolls the city's nightlife, scoping for needy, wealthy women with which to strike up a simpatico relationship. He gives them sex, they let him sponge off their extravagant lifestyle.

"I'm a very attractive man. I can't help it -- I just am," he informs us -- just in case we didn't know -- in voiceover early on.

Shortly thereafter, he has latched onto the movie's primary asset, Anne Heche, who's pure gusto and middle-aged lust, baring all for the script's copious sex scenes. Sample dialogue, delivered while writhing: "Yes, yes, YES!!"

Too bad while it borders on the laughable, Spread never quite ascends to the high-camp zenith of, say, Showgirls. Instead, the movie, directed by David Mackenzie, is intent on delving under Nikki's callow surface and showing that even a gigolo can grow. Thus, he soon falls for a female hustler played with amoral aplomb by Margarita Levieva. But can she redeem him? And does she even want to?

Of course, to care about the answers to these questions, you first have to have an actor capable of bringing equal portions of charisma, loathsomeness and vulnerability to the role. But the only pliability Kutcher demonstrates is when he's entangled with Heche or another actress on a table, sofa, bed or kitchen counter.

Give him this, though: He makes for a convincing scumbag.

Like you're surprised.

(This film is rated 18-A)

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