Entertainment

3 TALES, MULTIPLE PROBLEMS

RYAN Reynolds (“National Lampoon’s Van Wilder,” “The Amityville Horror”) plays God – I think – in “The Nines,” the clever but pretentious, New Age-y directing debut of prolific screenwriter John August (whose scripts run the gamut from both “Charlie’s Angels” flicks to “Go” and “Corpse Bride”).

Reynolds’ deity appears in different guises in the three segments of this mind twister: as a

substance-abusing TV actor under house arrest after accidentally setting his ex’s house on fire, as a TV writer whose battles with network execs over his latest project are being recorded for a reality show, and as the lead character in the writer’s series.

Reynolds is actually quite good, as are Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy (“Gilmore Girls”), who play wildly different roles in all three segments. But “The Nines,” which in real life began as a TV project, wavers uncomfortably between satire and dime-store existentialism on the big screen. It’s sort of as if Charlie Kaufman rewrote “The Fountain.”

THE NINES * 1/2

Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R (profanity, drugs, sexuality).At the Sunshine, Houston Street and First Avenue.