It's not exactly the smartest strategy: dropping the audience into an in- progress story while the opening credits roll by, as if one had decided to start watching a television series in the middle of an episode, halfway through a Fall season. But that's how the big-screen version of The Mod Squad begins, with punks-turned-cops Julie (Claire Danes), Pete (Giovanni Ribisi), and Linc (Omar Epps) already on the job and in the middle of a case and typically on the bad side of their flatfoot mentor, Greer (Dennis Farina) at an LA station house. So disorienting is the whirl of bad action, trite dialogue, and personality quirks in the first 15 minutes that even somebody old enough to have given half a damn about the '60s TV show could follow this stuff.

Ah, but you say, the TV show was itself a goofy bundling of bad action, trite dialogue, and personality quirks, a conservative network's idea of hip pandering to the kids at home. Sure, but this film version -- unlike, say, the two funny Brady Bunch movies -- couldn't find irony if it fell like a tree in the middle of production. There's very little certainty within the film about what it is supposed to be: a valentine to the original, a hip-hop update, a teeny-bopper product, a tongue-in-cheek lark, a twisted action movie, or an intersection of all these things. Since neither the writers (among them the film's director, AFI hotshot and johns auteur Scott Silver) or studio (MGM) can get their bearings on what to do with The Mod Squad's dated elements, the film disappears between its possibilities.

The actors certainly know it. As a self-loathing alcoholic whose boyfriend is a louse, Danes' Julie spends much of her time looking as put-upon as a 14-year-old who can't get a lift to the mall. As a psycho version of the rich boy Pete, Ribisi pulls all four of his favorite mannerisms from his little grab bag and beats them bloody into the ground. As the laconic Linc, Epps is so inscrutable as to seem invisible behind his eyes. During a transitional moment in the script when the three characters -- who have been accused of killing their boss and are being chased by the real villains -- decide to grow up and take matters in their own hands, the trio of performers literally stand in a circle, desperately trying to inject energy into the void-like scene.

So what if the cast in the old series could, at times, similarly be found engaged in intense rap sessions? At least they looked semi-natural at it. If Silver wants to affectionately mimic the old The Mod Squad, he should develop something like a coherent style to get the point across. Because this 90 minutes of tentative filmmaking scarcely resembles anything with a purpose.

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