MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Nuts’: When All You Need for Christmas Is a Lifesaver : Steve Martin heads a top-flight cast in Nora Ephron’s comedy about a suicide prevention center.

“Mixed Nuts” is a farcical whirligig that doesn’t whirl. It’s energetically unfunny, like “Radioland Murders,” and, like that film, it boasts top-flight talent. Maybe the idea of making a comedy about a suicide prevention center just got to everyone--it’s a bummed-out comedy about being bummed out.

Steve Martin plays Philip, the head of a Venice, Calif.-based suicide hotline service called Lifesavers. It’s Christmas Eve, and the lifesavers at Lifesavers are about to be evicted from their headquarters by their gloatingly unfeeling landlord (Garry Shandling). Philip’s co-workers are Catherine (Rita Wilson), a pretty wallflower who has a simmering crush on him, and Blanche (Madeline Kahn), a no-nonsense widow with a voice like an air-raid siren.

Directed by Nora Ephron, who co-wrote it with Delia Ephron, “Mixed Nuts” operates from a single, promising comedy conceit: Suicide hotline helpmates are as miserable as the people they are supposed to be helping. (The basis for the plot is an obscure French film, “Le Pere Noel est une Ordure,” or Santa Claus Is Garbage.) This could have been funny if the characters were miserable in ways that hit home--if they were flamboyantly, irresistibly miserable. But there’s a dull funk about this film; it seems in need of its own suicide hotline.

It has the problem of most failed farces: The complications in the movie are there only to make things more complicated. Characters are introduced to keep things hectic, but the timing is off and the lines don’t tingle. Anthony LaPaglia and Juliette Lewis play a dysfunctional couple--she’s the pregnant owner of a secondhand clothing store; he’s a sometime Santa who wants to be a “wall artist.” Their nattering inspires a Kervorkian response in the audience.

Rob Reiner, in a funny cameo, is a veterinarian who occasionally works on humans. Louie (Adam Sandler) serenades Catherine with his ukulele. (Sandler seems to have wandered in from one of his unfunnier “Saturday Night Live” sketches. Ukulele Man, anyone?) Liev Schreiber plays a suicidal transvestite who seeks out Philip at the office and ends up dancing with him. Someone like Michael Jeter in this role could have perked things up, but Schreiber plays it for heartfelt sympathy and it’s a drag (pun intended).

Nora Ephron, on the basis of her journalism, is a lot sharper than the director who made the gooey, coercively insipid “Sleepless in Seattle.” “Mixed Nuts” is even more insipid than that film.

It doesn’t draw on her talent for wiggy, softly devastating social observation. It’s an old story that Hollywood devalues its brightest talents, but here the devaluation seems to be entered into freely--enthusiastically. One big reason “Mixed Nuts” doesn’t work is that the people who made it are too smart for it. In comedic terms, all that Yuletide uplift doesn’t suit them.

Steve Martin has a few fresh moments, like the scene where he is suddenly swept onto the dance floor by the transvestite and glimmers with dumbfounded excitement. Garry Shandling is a good comic meanie--the movie could have used much more of his heartlessness. Madeline Kahn has a great scene trapped in an elevator. Her cries for help turn into rap.

But these moments would barely add up to the running time for the trailer. Even if “Mixed Nuts” were better crafted and choreographed, it would still be in trouble because of the soggy whimsy. Why start out to make a black comedy and then dump in all that whitener?

* MPAA rating: PG-13 for sex-related humor. Times guidelines: It includes jokes about suicide and a murder .

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‘Mixed Nuts’

Steve Martin: Philip Madeline Kahn: Blanche Robert Klein: Mr. Lobel Anthony LaPaglia: Felix A Sony Pictures release of a TriStar presentation of a Witt-Thomas production. Director Nora Ephron. Producers Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas, Joseph Hartwick. Executive producers Delia Ephron, James Skotchdopole. Screenplay by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Editor Robert Reitano. Costumes Jeffrey Kurland. Music George Fenton. Production design Bill Groom. Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.