Starring Steven Strait and Pell James. Rating unavailable. For showtimes, please see page 68

There's a pleasing patina of pure schlock that almost-and I stress almost-makes Undiscovered watchable. But this Coyote Ugly Lite (and how lite do you want it to get, exactly?), which follows a couple of young New Yorkers as they fight their way to El Lay fame and fortune, only has about 10 minutes' worth of dramatic material, and I pretty much described it already.

Steven Strait, a real-life rocker and beefed-up stud muffin, is the main mover here. He plays intense singer-songwriter Luke Falcon-just the first of many Jacqueline Susann-worthy names. On his last day in New Yawk, he bumps into budding model Brier Tucket (gentlemen, start your limericks) and finds her again when she heads west to try her hand at acting-not that we see much of that, either from the character or from Pell James who, sorry to say, isn't nearly as pretty as her leading man.

Each is kitted out with an amusing sounding board. Luke has his horndog brother (Kip Pardue, who must have showed up when Matthew Lillard was out of town), and Brier has a new best pal, who was a lovestruck lesbian until Ashlee Simpson's dad got hold of the script and nixed the gist of her role-and we're not making that up.

That's about it for characters, and development in general. Okay, there's Carrie Fisher, who plays the model's fairy god-agent, and Fisher Stevens, injecting some deeply needed humour as a record-label honcho called Garrett Schweck. Near the end, Peter Weller has a cameo as a veteran music biggie named Wick Treadway. I warned you I liked saying the names, and I get to, since there's little left to say about the movie.

By the way, it's directed by someone named Meiert Avis, who previously directed great-looking videos for Madonna, U2, and others. This thing looks good, too, although not all the actors can handle the relentless close-ups. And this may be the first time I've seen a performance-video-montage-trailer built right into the movie it's intended to promote (for Simpson, natch). By the way, Strait does his own singing, on songs by David Baerwald, many of which seem quite strong, not that you'd know it the way they rush through the tunes. "I'm a musician, not a rock star," Luke insists. So why does he have a skateboarding dog?