I am about to pan this film, so if you are dying to see it or a gang of deadly bandits are forcing you to see it, don’t read any further. It’s best that way.

If I say that the problem with “The Shape of Things” is flat acting, then I have to qualify that by saying that the lines themselves were flat and the actors were doing what they could with what they had.

If I say that the lines were flat, then I have to chalk this up in part to their abundance. You know you’re watching a movie made from a play when no one will ever stop talking.

If I say that the problem was all that talking, then I have to go on to take umbrage with the subject material, which is a decidedly pedantic discussion of Art, with a capital A. Oh, and it’s also about weak, spiritually impoverished human beings. Sermon, anyone?

In all fairness, I’m sure that when “The Shape of Things” was an Off-Broadway play, it was pretty darn good-though probably just as soulless an intellectual exercise as it is on the screen.

Writer/Director Neil LaBute set himself up with a capable cast-the ensemble consists of Rachel Weisz (“About a Boy,” “The Mummy Returns”), Paul Rudd (“The Cider House Rules,” “200 Cigarettes”), Gretchen Mol (“Rules of Attraction”) and Fred Weller (“The Business of Strangers”)-but the material simply withers on the big screen.

Set on a college campus, the story tracks the series of “improvements” in Adam (Rudd), an awkward, shapeless misfit whom Evelyn (Weisz) takes up and begins to mold (from their first meeting, she suggests changes to his hair style).

Tempted as I am to tell you the ending, that would be rather unsporting of me. But since you’re going to know the ending approximately half way through, it wouldn’t be a huge head start.

Skip it.

“The Shape of Things” is ratedR for language and some sexuality and opened last Friday.