‘BRIEF Interviews With Hideous Men” is a blast from the 1980s, when the idea that men were essentially rapists and women rapees was a popular way to score chicks on campus.
In a series of loosely connected episodes, adapted and directed by John Krasinski (“The Office”) from a short story collection by David Foster Wallace, a quiet grad student (Julianne Nicholson) tapes interviews with men about their icky behavior toward women. A mild mystery evolves about what transpired between her and her boyfriend (Krasinski).
Wallace, who went to college in the 1980s and did not succeed in unlearning what they taught there, has no ear for convincing dialogue or ability to shape characters: Everyone speaks in the sweatily polysyllabic, Look-at-This-Writing-I’m-Doing tone that makes a page of Wallace pass like an hour on the treadmill, and the men are dopes or creeps.
The exceptions are Krasinski’s slightly more interesting character, who reveals all in a climactic five-minute monologue, and a black interviewee (Frankie Faison) who speaks disgustedly about his father, a washroom attendant. But that episode is about race or class, not maleness, and doesn’t even belong in the movie. At least it’s a welcome break from the dreary guy-bashing of the rest.