Grade: D

Verdict: Drives off a cliff.

Details: Starring Paul Lewis, Steve Zahn and Leelee Sobieski. Directed by John Dahl. Rated R for vioence, language and sexual innuendo. One hour, 37 minutes.

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Review: About 20 minutes into the thriller wannabe “Joy Ride,” you get this sinking feeling. What had set itself up as a neat little bit of nastiness about a practical joke gone wrong has turned into “ 'Duel' for Dummies.”

“Duel,” you may remember, was Steven Spielberg's breakthrough 1971 TV movie about Dennis Weaver being chased by an enormous truck with a hellishly anonymous driver. Next thing you knew, he was doing “Jaws.”

In this version, Lewis (Paul Walker) has offered to give his friend Venna (Leelee Sobieski) a ride home from college. Along the way, he springs his ne'er-do-well older brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) from jail. Fuller gets the Venna picture immediately. “Oh,” he says. “You're still playing the neutered boyfriend who's always there for her.”

Turning a friendship into a romance turns out to be the least of Lewis' problems. Fuller gets him to buy a CB radio (“It's like a primitive Internet”) to play with on the trip. When they hear from the gravelly-voiced Rusty Nail, Fuller goads Lewis into pretending he's a luscious babe named Candy Cane. They even set the poor dope up for a motel rendezvous.

But it's not nice to mess with Rusty Nail. . . . 

The most torturous aspect of “Joy Ride” is having to watch it run out of gas right in front of you. The movie tries desperately to ratchet up the suspense. Alas, the only way it can think of doing that is by ratcheting up the stupidity quotient. You know, the things people have to do in movies like this to keep themselves in peril. The empty gas tank. The deserted gas station. The decision not to call the cops. The dead-end road.

The sudden surge in Sobieski's career is, frankly, a mystery; this is one of three movies this blank-faced actress has in the pipeline. However, Walker and Zahn aren't bad — especially Zahn, whose sly doper charm still hasn't found its best role.

The script is swill, but the bigger disappointment is director John Dahl, who knows how to make a decent movie. A more-than-decent movie. He proved it with “The Last Seduction” and “Red Rock West.” Here, he's been beaten down either by the idiot script or the idiot moneymen or both. So is there anything good to say about “Joy Ride”? Sure. It's better than “Jeepers Creepers.”

Wonder if that'll turn up as a blurb?

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution