With his 1996 debut film, Welcome to the Dollhouse, New Jersey filmmaker Todd Solondz showed incredible promise.

His exploration of teen angst was as insightful as it was honest.

Solondz's second film, Happiness, was far more disturbing and controversial, but no less real.

With Storytelling, Solondz flounders significantly. From its structure to its execution, it feels self-indulgent and self-important.

Storytelling is two unrelated stories about people who consider themselves outsiders.

Fiction takes place on a college campus in the mid-1980s and involves three students in an introductory creative writing class.

The class is taught by a former Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American author (Robert Wisdon) whose career has gone nowhere, so he is bitter and vengeful.

He sets out to destroy his students either by unjustly attacking their work or by seducing them and humiliating them in the process.

Vi (Selma Blair), his latest conquest, has just broken up with Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick). The suggestion is Vi chooses her sexual partners because they are on the periphery of her notion of society.

Marcus has cerebral palsy and Mr. Scott is an older, African-American male.

It's never really clear who is using whom in these relationships, which seems to be the whole point of this 20-minute character study.

The second story, Non-Fiction, follows a first-time documentary filmmaker (Paul Giamatti) as he turns his camera on high school senior Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber) and the boy's dysfunctional family.

Scooby, who wants to be a TV talk show host, is the bain of his parents existence.

Dad (John Goodman) is ruled by money and Mom (Julie Hagerty) is a mousey perfectionist. Brother Brady (Noah Fleiss) is embarassed because Scooby is openly gay, and youngest brother Mikey (Jonathan Osser) feels all of Scooby's problems make him the centre of the family.

At just 87 minutes, Storytelling seems interminable because, unfortunately, there is so little story being told.

(This film is rated R)

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