By Susan Stark Detroit News Film Critic A feverishly stylish and admiring homage to the '70s glam rock scene, Todd HaynesÕ "Velvet Goldmine" evokes the audacious spirit of an era in which the semitalented dazzled the impressionable with their show of nerve and glitter . ItÕs a giddy trip down memory lane, longer on emotion and conviction than on powers of persuasion. Part pseudo-documentary, part musical and part adoring valentine, HaynesÕ film stars androgynously handsome Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as a kid from a working-class Birmingham, England, suburb who becomes the toast of London and then the world with his calculatedly provocative rock star act. ÊÊRhys-Meyers has worked in movies before, notably opposite Minnie Driver in "The Governess", but this is a movie that sees him as A-list material and may just convince casting directors that his dewy eyes, pouty lips and willowy physique give him more than a model's credentials for big-screen work. ÊÊTo accentuate the positive, he's a minimalist; you donÕt get much in the way of sentient emotional or cerebral function from him. The poet Keats said it first, and Haynes here seems to be seconding the motion: A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Haynes casts the film as a kind of expressionist report from a young English journalist who looks into the story of the Rhys-Meyers character on the 10th anniversary of his stunningly well-staged assassination in midperformance. He lives, but he remains elusive to the young reporter who, in retrospect, turns out to have been a teen-ager mesmerized by the glam rock stars of his formative years. ÊÊBy far the most energetic performance in the picture comes from Ewan McGregor, who, since his "Trainspotting" days, has made a specialty of playing aggressive, threatening but perversely attractive young men. Here he bares all rear, front and soul as a nut case since his growing-up days in a Michigan trailer park. As things turn out, he becomes an icon of musical, social and sexual rebellion for teens in this country about the same time as the Rhys-Meyers characterÕs star is rising, under the fiercely cynical stewardship of a manager, in England. No surprise: When the sparkly iconoclasts from here and abroad get together, they generate fireworks on both the professional and deeply personal front. In rather grandiose style, Haynes film links these two directly to Oscar Wilde as pop cultural royalty. Christian Bale, as the journalist who once yearned to join the ranks of the militantly bisexual, and Toni Collette, as the uncredentialed but devoted wife Rhys-Meyers rejects once he gets a close look at McGregor, also have key roles. Brilliant in the tragicomic Muriel's Wedding, Collette has had a series of also-ran roles ever since. She deserves better. Slowly but surely, Velvet Goldmine sucks you fleetingly into a perspective that sees the glam rock stars of 20 years ago as people who, in their own words, hoped to Òchange the worldÓ with their challenge to established codes of behavior specifically, sexuality. It presents them as bright, blessed, immensely charismatic people with the potential to illuminate the rest of the dull, drab, workaday world. Those who share its point of view, going in, will come away immensely confirmed. Yet the film lacks the discipline and intellect necessary to win many perhaps any converts.