Starring David Hewlett and Andrew Miller. Rating unavailable.

Most Canadians are now willing to concede that the best movies made in this country are able to compete with the finest films from anywhere, including the United States. What they are not yet prepared to admit is that under this thin stratum of genius, the overwhelming majority of homegrown product is no longer as terrible as it once was. Perversely, Canucks still seem to believe that between genius and incompetence there is zip.

This perception perhaps explains why virtually no one saw Nothing when it played last year's Vancouver International Film Festival, even though its director, Vincenzo Natali, had already won a certain celebrity thanks to his 1997 cult hit, Cube. Despite a few amateurish moments, Nothing is actually pretty good entertainment, but pretty good is not a phrase that audiences tend to associate with Canadian cinema.

David (David Hewlett, Natali's high-school buddy who's been in all three of his major films so far) and Andrew (Andrew Miller, who also collaborated on the script with Andrew Lowery) are double-dyed losers whose already miserable lives have suddenly gotten a whole lot worse. Cornered in their cluttered, claustrophobic house by a righteously angry crowd of cops, creditors, and citizens, the boys silently pray that their assembled persecutors will simply disappear.

Remarkably, that is exactly what happens. Not only do David and Andrew's vigilantes evaporate but just about everything else does too, leaving behind only the protagonists, their possessions, and their not-so-sweet--smelling home.

After bouncing across miles of nothingness (with the look and texture of uncooked tofu), the boys slowly realize that they have the power to will away anything they dislike. (Their antipathies would appear to include all women.)

With survival no longer an issue, agoraphobic Andrew and hangdog David spend all their time playing video games and watching TV, cable having been miraculously spared from annihilation.

For these overgrown children, the only annoying things left are...themselves.

Yes, boys and girls, Nothing is a tongue-in-cheek homage to Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos, the existentialist play that states "hell is other people." In fact, when you think about it, the film makes an even stronger claim than the play: hell is not only other people; it's us as well.

That such tony speculation can coexist with some pretty cheesy comic routines is part of Nothing's quirky charm. It is, after all, a movie about even less than Seinfeld.