This is a very funny film about a creepy, excruciatingly lonely world.

An obscene, misanthropic go-for-broke satire, Pretty Persuasion is so gleefully nasty that the fact that it was even made and released is astonishing. Much of it is also extremely funny.

It's too bad that the satire is not more pointed, because Pretty Persuasion is outrageously funny in short blasts, mainly thanks to James Woods at his most gleefully depraved.

In a star-making performance, Evan Rachel Wood stars as essentially a younger version of Nicole Kidman's media-age femme fatale from "To Die For," an aspiring 15-year-old actress who hides a sharp, calculating mind behind a façade of vapid, chattering self-absorption.

Kills itself with unrestrained negativism, but almost resuscitates itself with some great comedy.