Actor/director Ben Stiller's new movie is a slacker comedy about a young woman falling in and out of love -- and responsibility.

And like winsome Lelaina, audiences will fall in and out of love with Reality Bites.

A romantic triangle forms the center of Reality Bites. Aspiring documentary filmmaker Lelaina (played by anguished pixie Winona Ryder) is torn between two men -- a brooding slacker (Ethan Hawke) and a hyper ultrayuppie (Stiller). In the chaos of a post-college world, Lelaina must straighten out her heart and her pocketbook.

Call it entertaining, yes. But also call it another Hollywood attempt to pin labels on a generation that has not yet come to identify itself.

And in Hollywood's relentless quest to pigeonhole Xers (or whatever we're being called this week), it has produced a film that, in many ways, mocks itself.

You see, in Reality Bites, Lelaina is busy producing a generation-defining documentary about her friends. But when The Establishment gets hold of the film, it mutilates and commercializes it, reducing it to mindless, stereotypical info-fluff.

Unfortunately, The Establishment has also gotten hold of Reality Bites.

Written by 23-year-old Helen Childress, the script reaches for a closeness with Xers and almost achieves it, except that Hollywood casting got in the way.

Ryder, though she sports shorter hair, is still too much the image of the maladjusted teen, branded that way since Heathers. And Hawke, as her quasi-main squeeze Troy, is still a pretty boy. His scowling face and cool hair keep getting in the way of his acting.

Although this film showcases the mass appeal of hip youngsters Ryder, Hawke and Stiller, using relative unknowns (as with Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused and Slacker) could have made for a more original film. Ryder and company already have overdeveloped screen personas.

That's not to say the script is flawless, either. At points, it drops slacker vocab the way a socialite drops names.

Reality Bites tries too hard to convince its audience that it's in touch. As a result, the film is cluttered with references to quik-mart lifestyles, Camel cigarettes, Conjunction Junction, indie rock, The GAP, Rolling Rock, McJobs . . .

I would rather care more about the characters than their eating habits.

The film does have some redeeming qualities, however.

Janeane Garofalo is wonderful as Lelaina's roommate and '70s throwback, Vickie. She brings surprising warmth and humor to a supporting role. Her anguish about an AIDS test (which she calls a rite of passage for the '90s) provides a moment where audiences can really identify with her character.

Ryder and Hawke also do justice to the moment when Hawke's character first admits his love for Lelaina. Ryder's eyes widen for an instant and her heart wavers between the two men in her life. Hawke's Troy then laughs drunkenly, and bitterly, in her face.

Although Winona's eyes can do some justice to her role, her acting does not carry her far enough. Through the angst-ridden clouds of cigarette smoke, it's hard to find the character development.

All told, Reality Bites is a film that sets the stage, but forgets the actors.