'Wired' (R)

"Why the drugs, John? Why the needles? Huh? Huh?" demands Bob Woodward of John Belushi in the dying moments of "Wired." Good question. We were all wondering the same thing. We've sat through the silliest celebrity bio since "Mommie Dearest" and haven't a clue.

"Wired" is a biography without an ounce of soul or a shred of dignity. Billed as a fantasy-comedy-drama, it manages to be none of these. The drama is laughable, the comedy lame, the fantasy without wings. Belushi (Michael Chiklis) isn't funny; Woodward (J.T. Walsh) gets all the laughs. Quick example: Editor pops into Woodward's office. "Have you heard about Haig?" Woodward gives him a withering puh-leez look and intones, "This is John Belushi's wife on the phone."

"Wired" is relentlessly ludicrous as directed by Larry Peerce from Earl Mac Rauch's preposterous script, which he adapted from Woodward's book. It chronicles not only Belushi's rise, fall, afterlife and autopsy but Woodward's note-taking. And then there's the guardian angel Velasquez (Ray Sharkey), a Puerto Rican cabby who taxis Belushi's ghost back to the past, a la Jimmy Stewart's angel in "It's a Wonderful Life." (Producer Edward Feldman has described Rauch's work as a "Frank Capra-ish way" to adapt the book.) And then the lot of them vie for screen time.

The story jumps from Belushi's autopsy to a samurai skit to Woodward interviewing Judy Belushi (Lucinda Jenney) to Dan Aykroyd (Gary Groomes) chiding Belushi for smoking to Cathy Smith (Patti D'Arbanville) and her fatal needle. "Wired" has more cuts than a slasher movie, but to Peerce's credit we never get lost. But then, we never know how the filmmakers feel about Belushi either. They would have been better off making a straightforward documentary. At least that way we'd have had a peek at the roots of Belushi's obsessive behavior.

"Wired" brushes over everything, inconclusively pointing the finger at Hollywood ("What do the stars do when they're not working?" asks a wide-eyed Woodward of Belushi's manager. "Drugs, booze, sex," comes the answer). The only clear accusation is leveled at a woman photographer who snaps madly away as the runny-nosed Belushi gets stoned for the camera. Okay, say all the attention brought him down. Or maybe it is just hip ethos -- the good die young and so forth. But why was Belushi so susceptible?

"Punchline," the failed movie about comedians, tries, though it doesn't do it very well, to understand the soul of the comedian. And that is a lot of what's missing here. There are damn few as happy as Bob Hope. In one scene an acting coach, the Vince Lombardi of comedy, screams at a younger John: "Comedy is aggression. Make 'em laugh till it hurts. Make 'em laugh till they wet their pants. Make 'em laugh till they have a hemorrhage. . . . That's our job as comedians."

Belushi was a coarse, rude, angry man who made people laugh because of it. He was a killer bee, a samurai, a Blues Brother, the cheeseburger man, the Animal House animal. Chiklis, obliged to reenact all of these, is not angry and not funny -- the comedy sketches are the only thing we don't laugh at. Sam Kinison might have played the part -- like Belushi, he's obscene, overweight, abusive and mad as hell. Chiklis, who does look and sound like Belushi, is rather cherubic in his movie debut. There's a Bambi-ish quality to his portrait of debauchery, a strangely cute requiem for a funny man.

Sharkey is more believable -- an Anglo cast as a Puerto Rican. "We going for a ride, Hemo, choo and me," the knowing Velasquez tells the reluctant ghost, who goes mano a mano with his guardian angel in hopes of escaping his clutches. But heaven can't wait, Hemo. At one point they pass Woodward driving down Sunset Strip. "He's gonna do for choo, Hemo, what he did for Nixon."

The filmmakers go to great, awkward lengths to establish a pre-death relationship between Belushi and Woodward. Belushi read "All the President's Men," says Judy to Woodward. "He used to do me," says Woodward of the comedian's impersonations. This perhaps is supposed to make it easier to take when the writer ends up as an attendant in the death scene at the Chateau Marmont. Cathy turns to him. "How about you, Woody, wanna hit?" she asks lewdly. While this may be the ne plus ultra bad line in the movie, we don't want to overlook Belushi's last words: "I can't breathe. Breathe for me, Woodward."

Here the filmmakers admonish the writer for his cold, factual take on the Belushi myth. In so doing they are essentially disavowing all responsibility, joining the Hollywood crowd in whining about being misunderstood. All through the movie they assuage their colleagues -- as when Judy tells Woodward, "I want people to see him as he was. The drugs and more." Woodward, portrayed as the Broderick Crawford of journalism, nods. This ice bucket probably wouldn't even cry at Deep Throat's funeral.

Inappropriate performances, rattled leadership and sheer nonsense aside, "Wired" is well intentioned. If it does anything well, it is to deglamorize the drug scene by focusing on the indignities of death, beginning with the grisly autopsy. "Stupid, stupid," says a happy young mortician as he rolls Belushi's body into cold storage. "A waste," says Velasquez. And, says a hard-nosed detective, "he was just another fat junkie who went belly up." It wasn't such a wonderful life, but whose life was it, anyway?