Carl Hiaasen's ``Striptease'' was a novel that thought all of itscharacters were hilarious. Now here is the Demi Moore movie version, in whichall of the characters are hilarious except for Demi Moore's. Her character,named Erin Grant, is a woman who has lost her daughter in a crooked custodybattle, and goes to work in a strip club to earn enough to win her child back.

The woman is brave, heroic and stacked, but she's not funny. The movie's fatalflaw is to treat her like a plucky Sally Field heroine. That throws a wetblanket over the rest of the party. The point of the Hiaasen story was that everyone was funny: He cast adubious eye on the strippers, the bar management, the customers, the sex-madcongressman, the sneaky sugar baron, Erin's ex-husband--on everyone. They wereall part of the same comic world. When you extract one of those characters fromthe mix and treat her seriously, it throws off the timing and it undermines therationale of the whole undertaking. My guess is that when Demi Moore and the writers started musing abouthow Erin Grant would ``really feel'' in a situation, or how the audience wouldbe able to ``identify'' with her mother's urge to win her child back, someoneshould have stepped in to gently say: It's a comedy, honey, and when it's not acomedy, it's a satire. Everything in this movie should be for laughs, includingthe ex-husband, the kids and the brave Erin Grant. As ``Striptease'' opens, custody of Erin's child is being given over toher worthless husband (Robert Patrick), who may be a convicted criminal but was,as the Florida judge recalls fondly, ``a great tailback.'' Erin needs work andstarts stripping at the Eager Beaver, a ``gentleman's club''--so called becausemost of its customers are never called one anywhere else. We meet the fellowstrippers, including the buxom Urbana Sprawl (Pandora Peaks), who is named aftermy hometown and so of course deserves a mention here. The bouncer is Shad,played by Ving Rhames, who was Marcellus Wallace in ``Pulp Fiction'' and thistime provides a strong shoulder for a vulnerable girl to cry on. The club customers include the Erin-worshipping Jerry Killian (WilliamHill), who thinks he may know how to help Erin win her child back, and theperpetually drunk and randy U.S. Rep. David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), who iscapable of leaping onto the stage in mid-grind to protect one of the dancersfrom an annoying customer. Among the other threats to the dancers are boaconstrictors that wrap themselves around their necks, and a management that isalways thinking up bright new ideas. One stripper protests against the latestproposal, which is creamed corn wrestling: ``No chance I'm gonna roll around increamed corn with a bunch of yahoos trying to push Niblets up my hoo-hah.'' There is in that dialogue a suggestion of the direction ``Striptease''might have taken. Certainly the director, Andrew Bergman, is capable of making asatirical laughfest; his credits include ``Honeymoon in Vegas'' and ``TheFreshman.'' But the problem is with Erin Grant, who interrupts the comic rhythmwith her underlying seriousness. When she's not on the screen, the charactersare free to float into satire, and Burt Reynolds has some splendid scenes as thetool of the local sugar cartel. But when Erin returns, the other actors have tomatch her more somber energy level, and there goes the comedy. The sex business is certainly ripe for satirical treatment. But nothere. That leaves the movie's much-advertised nudity and eroticism, which for mewere disappointing. The stripteases are choreographed to present the strippersas seasoned pros, indifferent to their nudity and disdainful of their customers.

To be erotic, a striptease must seem to mean something to the person disrobing:There must be the illusion that nudity is a meaningful decision that thestripper is taking reluctantly. Most striptease gimmicks and props are thereforecounter-productive. A stripper who needs to perform with a snake, or demonstratedexterity in making tassels twirl in opposite directions, is essentially sayingthat she realizes her unclothed body is of no interest unless she also doesparlor tricks. The strippers in ``Striptease'' take pains to show that stripping inpublic is without psychic risk to them. This is true even of the Erin Grantcharacter, who claims at one point she gets nauseous before she goes onstage,but is a pro the moment the spotlight hits her. The attitude she projects in theTV ads is the same one that carries through the movie: I'm doing this sobrazenly that you'll never know how I really feel about it. The greatest stripper of all time was probably Tempest Storm, who is, Igather, still active in her 60s. Perhaps no one alive has taken it off moreoften. Yet on the two or three occasions when I saw her (including once in asleazy Times Square theater), she was able to create the illusion that she wasreluctant--all but a blushing novice--and there was a certain sweet delight inthe way she finally disrobed. The strippers in ``Striptease'' would possiblyfind her act too revealing; their impersonality is a shield protecting them fromthe suckers. Hiaasen is a very funny writer, whose work needs to be respected if itis to work on the screen. Like Elmore Leonard, who Hollywood finally got rightin ``Get Shorty,'' he is not a writer whose books you film for the plot. Youfilm him for the dialogue and the attitude. Forget that, and why bother?