"Best Actress" is a veritable valley of the dulls.
     Fashioned as a tart, tricky, irreverent sendup of Tinseltown, the first original film from E! Entertainment Television instead is merely trite and trashy.
     Reminiscent of "The Oscar," the so-bad-it-was-good 1966 disaster, it revolves around five nominees going for the gold. Never mind that none of them seems particularly worthy or likable. As we learn early on, one of the losers plans to shoot the winner at the Academy Awards. Do we care? No. Should you care? Hardly.
     With a campier, cattier script, writer Robert Cooper might've at least provided a guilty pleasure. Instead, he gives us silly scenes involving sexual innuendo, drugs, lesbians, liquor and projectile vomiting.
     "Melrose Place" alum Thomas Calabro plays magazine writer Ted Gavin, an unscrupulous hack and wannabe producer assigned to profile each of the ambitious actresses: British beauty Fiona Covington (Rachel Hunter), cokehead Amber Lyons (Jordan Ladd), closeted gay Lori Seefer (Elisa Donovan), former porn star Karen Kroll (Jamie Pressly) and alcoholic diva Connie Travers (Loretta Devine).
     Actually, two of the callous characters end up dead. But then everything about this misfire is moribund, from the subpar performances to the drab direction (one scene barely has enough extras to fill the frame).
     Not surprisingly, E!'s own Steve Kmetko, Jules Asner and Todd Newton appear in cameos, making a valiant stab at verisimilitude. It's not enough.
     And the loopy finale finds Gary Busey announcing the titular honor (with no statuette in sight, by the way) to one unlucky lady.
     As it stands, the real loser is anyone watching the entire film, which is clearly no award winner.
* "Best Actress" airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on E! Entertainment Television. It is rated TV-14-SVLD (may be unsuitable for viewers under 14, with special advisories for sex, violence, coarse language and suggestive dialogue).