BEING PROMOTED AS the most critically acclaimed film of the year (so far), Paul Haggis's first directorial feature provides a fine opportunity to note which critics you need never take seriously again. Namely, any caught clapping their heads off at this crap-a-palooza, a steaming pile of horseshit spray-painted Oscar gold – though, in fact, Crash takes itself so seriously, it might settle for nothing less than the Nobel Peace Prize. Hewing way too close to the Magnolia model (complete with climactic rain of frogs and Aimee Mann-esque songs with lyrics like "Life keeps tumblin' your heart in circles / Till you let goooooo"), it throws together umpteen marquee names as two-dimensional characters who intersect during a fateful 36 hours in that Hollywood veteran's perennial notion of Everytown, L.A. One dimension is that they're all racist – and aren't we all, the movie sorrowfully chides – and the other is that they're still "human," meaning they love their kids or have sick parents or such. How complex life is! Among those playing demographic stereotypes are Brendan Fraser as an ambitious district attorney and Sandra Bullock as his snippy wife, who is traumatized when they're carjacked at gunpoint. Matt Dillon is a race-profiling cop who goes out of his way to humiliate a well-to-do black couple (Thandie Newton, Terrence Howard), discomfiting his rookie partner (Ryan Phillippe). Larenz Tate and Ludacris are the carjackers, one the MIA brother of tightly wrapped LAPD detective Don Cheadle. Michael Pena plays a struggling single parent and locksmith who haplessly magnetizes the fury of a recently robbed Iranian shopkeeper (Shaun Toub). And so on. With every scene a blunt confrontation, the movie is a Rube Goldberg contraption in which one overamped event sets off another, each obvious irony and tragic misunderstanding highlighted in boldface throughout. We're meant to sigh and say, "Oh, the humanity!" and then smile through tears as an inevitable series of not-so-little epiphanies prompts the characters to stop and gasp, "Omigawd, where are my values?!?" But achieving this Pavlovian arc requires a series of whopping narrative coincidences and jaw-dropping manipulations – one adorable-tot shooting is so mawkish and rigged you might call it child pornography. By the end, Crash's "good intentions" curdle into toxic fraudulence. (Dennis Harvey)