Call it Naturally Boring Killers. Scaredy-cat, white-trash lovers Watty (Gil Bellows) and Starlene (Renee Zellweger) are so uninteresting that, while on the lam, they prefer to talk about the exploits of other famous outlaw couples (Bonnie and Clyde, for instance). A pop detachment datestamps Love & a .45; in 1999, 1994's alternately violent and ironic Love & a .45 seems quaint. It's also intolerable.

The "I Ching"-obsessed Watty Watts (how clever!) is a convenience store stick-'em-upper by trade. His earnings of late have been reserved for his girlfriend Star's diamond engagement ring. But he still doesn't have the money to fully pay off the stone, bought for him on credit by the proverbial big boss, and so Watty accepts a typical 'big-score' job alongside the hysteria-prone Billy Mack Black (Rory Cochrane). The hold-up gets botched, natch, and in no time Watty has ditched Billy, killed a couple of cops, and hit the road with Star in search of the promised land. (Their pursuers include scorned Billy and several hit men who remind us of Foghorn Leghorn in Reservoir Dogs clothing. On that note, Love & a .45 actually contains a moment in which one of these slim necktie baddies lies bleeding to death in the back seat of a speeding car!)

True to her moniker, Star covets fame. Everywhere the couple stops, with fingers crossed that they'll wind up in the press, Star boasts of their status as criminals. (Aside: an aneurysm might've formed in my brain from hearing Zellweger utter in her squeaky and gravelly Southern pitch, "Wee're gonna be lyke moooovee staurrrs" over and over again. Should I drop dead in a few weeks, you'll know why.)

Watty and Star take plenty of road-movie detours into Pointless Celebrity Cameo-ville. There's the late, great Jack Nance as a preacher bound and gagged in recompense for marrying them. There's Ann Wedgeworth (late of "Three's Company": she was the object of Mr. Ferly's affection) as Star's gun-toting mother. (Her pistol is the colour of rainbows.) There's a pre-Ulee's Gold Peter Fonda as Star's father, a hippie who took so many drugs in the sixties that he's paralyzed from the waist down and unable to speak without the assistance of a throat amplifier. (It wasn't until the indie scene exploded that quirk became a substitute for richness of character; to be fair, Fonda has Love & a .45's best line: "I'm down with time.") Watty narrates these proceedings with all the subtlety of SAP voice-overs for the blind.

Tarantino's films (including but not limited to True Romance and Natural Born Killers) crackle because they charge headlong into clichés and then subvert them. (They also possess a pious centre, all.) True Romance, for instance, is not content to ape Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde, two of its more obvious sources: crooked lovers Clarence and Alabama are not seeking fame and fortune, yet the road they travel leads to Hollywood! The "hillbilly" sequence in Pulp Fiction references Deliverence, samurai movies, and The Wild One, in that order, yet it's a samurai setpiece without peer.

Meanwhile, the work of Tarantino's minions are largely misinformed and amoral (and sometimes immoral) creations that strive no further for cool than through the imitation of better pictures and mere acknowledgement of the aphorisms on display. (This type of laziness has also marred Scream scribe Kevin Williamson's work of late, in particular The Faculty.) Clement McCarty Talkington is a prototypical Tarantino-wannabe slacker. His Love & a .45 (a vile Gen-X title if there ever was one) is an indolent, smug, ultra-derivative bomb and an inexcusable prostitution of talent. Talkington's filmography on the Internet Movie Database identifies his latest work as something called Killer Head, starring Emilio Estevez and Fairuza Balk. 'nuff said.

Strangely, Love & a .45 has received the deluxe treatment on DVD. The film's extras rival those of many high-profile Special Edition studio releases. First, a discussion of the video and audio quality. This is a non-anamorphic transfer, but a good one at that. Sometimes the 1.85:1 image appears overmatted (the tops of heads hug the frameline), and it's wanting in contrast and sharpness. Fleshtones ring true, however, and saturation is even. One or two exterior camera pans reveal motion artifacts. The audio is Dolby Surround and contains a fair amount of bass. Surround effects are not abundant, but the music, supervised by soundtrack guru Happy Walters, sounds clear and full.

From the menu, one can access a wealth of supplements, starting with a feature-length commentary by Talkington, Bellows, and producer Darin Scott. To be fair, their camaraderie is fairly entertaining and informative, though the trio continually heaps unworthy praise on each other's efforts. (Too, the commentary's mix is shoddy; Love & a .45's sound effects and music often drown out the orators.) Next for the sampling are four (highly-compressed) deleted scenes titled "Car Sex," "Speed Lab," "Interview," and "Club soda"--pretty self-explanatory designations, with the exception of that last one, a stupid, stupid, stupid scene.

The disc's best bonus compares two storyboarded sequences to their filmed and edited counterparts. The thumbnail sketches reveal a student's ambition (lots of Hitchcockian close-ups, gratuitous camera movements) while the finished products demonstrate the realities of shooting a low-budget movie: just get it in the can. The only thing I disliked about this section is that its menu is inescapable. One has to stop the DVD and relaunch in order to return to the main screen. A section appropriately called "Additional Junk" houses three more intriguing, if wholly useless, extras: "Father Pecro"; "Horton Heat"; and "Crime Channel"--in layman's terms, footage that is seen in snippets in Love & a .45 presented in full for your enjoyment. (Talkington mentions having submitted Bellows' audition tape for the DVD, and I would have appreciated that more than "Father Pecro," especially.) Rounding out this package is a trailer: Love & a .45 was marketed as best they could.-Bill Chambers