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When misery needs company, Jimmy's there, his head hanging down, the weight of the world on his shoulders, rage coursing through his veins. He's a supermarket gofer who steals beer from his employer, grumps at his only friend, Ray (Ethan Hawke), and browbeats his beautiful wife, Annie (Carla Gugino).

He has no skills, no personality and no sense of humor, yet he aspires to become a stand-up comic. He attempts this on open-mike nights at the comedy club near his New Jersey home.

With rage often cited as the fuel of comedy, this sounds like a reasonable setup. But Whaley, who began directing domestic downers with his far superior "Joe the King" (1999), doesn't have any laughs to offer. What Jimmy is, is what customers get -- anger, boredom, self-indulgence. His "act" is a riff about his miserable existence, mostly about his failures to be what he admires in other people. In the midst of a story about a mountain climber, he stops and asks forlornly, "Why do I talk about it, why don't I do it?"

Jimmy's anger has a reason, but he has no clue how to channel it into humor. Nothing is funny to him, so he has no idea what's funny to others. Hard to say why Whaley is fascinated with this black cloud of a human, unless he, too, is working out rage in a kind of stage-bound death wish.

The movie, which had its local premiere at the Atlanta Film Festival last year, is as unpleasant as its hero, and the film audience gets no more for its money than the customers at the Laughing Stock. Still, watching Whaley take Jimmy down his tortured path has some morbid appeal -- like a train wreck in progress. Onstage, he grows from a nervous rookie trying to find his voice to a confident, contentious jerk, insulting customers for their apathy and embarrassing his wife with revelations about their declining sex life.

As "The Jimmy Show" wears on, and Jimmy is finally abandoned by Annie, two questions arise: What did she ever see in him? And what comedy-club manager would allow a guy like him onstage every week? Jimmy's lone saving grace is his devotion to his disabled grandmother, a lush who throws beer cans at the couple's baby-sitter and keeps him hopping to fill her medicine cabinet.

There's a tender moment near the end that reveals a modicum of humanity in Jimmy, but it's not enough to redeem him, the movie or Whaley.