by Katherine Monk If all you needed to make a good movie was a great soundtrack, Velvet Goldmine would be a classic. Packed with glam-rock clones and classics covered by the likes of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, the movie's biggest highs come in tingling electric riffs hitting your ears as the music of Bryan Ferry, T-Rex and Iggy Pop cascades through the speakers. Since this is a music-based movie, Velvet Goldmine should be awash in these chakra-shivering waves of sexuality-laced rock 'n' roll. Sadly, the movie fails to reach a stage of true titillation, let alone anything resembling a dramatic climax. So where does Todd Haynes' good idea go awry? You name it. Outside of the music, this movie is so loose around the edges that it slips off its sprockets in the first reel. "Loosely" based on fact, Velvet Goldmine tells the story of a "fictional" character named Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who bears more than a passing resemblance to David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days. Like Bowie, Brian Slade performs his first song in a dress. He makes up a fictional character who came from outer space named Maxwell Demon. He causes a sensation when he tells Melody Maker magazine he's bisexual. His wife, a thinly veiled copy of Angie called Mandy, is an American who washes out after their divorce. Oh yeah, the pivotal plot device is Brian Slade's staged murder, which draws the days of glitter rock to a close. If that weren't enough to force Bowie's people into a litigious frenzy, there's the question of Brian's romantic liaison with Curt Wild, a thinly veiled version of Iggy Pop played by Ewan McGregor. Wild is an American rocker with trailer-park roots who has a slight smack problem, but a genuine lust for life. One lustful encounter involves Arthur Stuart, an aspiring journalist who comes of age listening to the sexually ambiguous stylings of the cutting-edge '70s. It's through the journalist that Velvet Goldmine unravels its torturous narrative. Christian Bale plays Stuart, a writer for "The Herald" -- an American publication that appears to have its offices in some fleabag hotel in North London (yes, every once in a while the location scout gets it completely wrong.) Arthur is told to find out what happened to Ziggy -- I mean Brian Slade -- 10 years after his "murder" was revealed to be a hoax. Borrowing its structure from Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, the reporter begins to round up the central characters, prompting long, seemingly random flashbacks that eventually lead to the current whereabouts of the self-exiled alien. How anyone could go so wrong making a movie about the glam era is hard to fathom. It has a talented cast, a great, almost legendary, story and some inspired cinematography from Maryse Alberti to put us in the super-mod mood. Whether director Haynes (Safe, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison) or editor James Lyons is responsible for the film's splintered narrative is hard to tell, but someone deserves a good spank. Haynes is ultimately responsible, so the film's complete lack of continuity, schizoid character development and self-conscious preciousness has to be pinned on him. In Velvet Goldmine, no character transcends the limits of surface style, and glam rock comes off looking like a cheesy phase instead of a small-scale revolution, leaving the music -- the movie's sole attribute -- without a context. Forget fame, Mr. Haynes. Shame, shame, shame -- it's what you get when things are hollow.