NEW YORK -- Richard Day's feature about a '50s-era, closeted gay movie star is based on his off-Broadway stage play, and you can practically see the actors pausing after laugh lines. The sort of stiff cinematic adaptation that never manages to overcome its staginess, "Straight-Jacket" wastes its promising premise with a wavering tone that veers uneasily between camp humor and, pardon the expression, straightness.

The film's central, Rock Hudson-like character is self-involved Guy Stone (Matt Letscher), Hollywood's reigning hunky star, who is, of course, secretly gay. Scheduled to play the lead in the movie "Ben-Hur," Guy finds his career on the verge of derailment after he's photographed leaving a notorious gay bar. In a desperate effort to restore his macho credibility, his rapacious agent (Veronica Cartwright) makes an arrangement for Guy to marry his studio chief's ditzy blond secretary Sally (Carrie Preston), who is, naturally, completely oblivious to her dreamboat husband's true proclivities.

The plan goes well enough until Guy falls in love with Rick (Adam Greer), the left-leaning screenwriter of his latest project, a drama about a coal miners union. Guy's newfound social conscience leads to a series of personal and professional complications in which he finds himself at the center of Hollywood's communist witch hunt.

There are more than a few amusing moments in the film, many of them provided by Michael Emerson as Guy's wisecracking personal valet. And its McCarthy-era subplot is an uncommonly ambitious element. But ultimately "Straight-Jacket" lacks the sharp wit necessary to overcome its formulaic, roman a clef story line. Not helping matters are the overly broad performances and a visual style that celebrates its own artificiality to an alarmingly self-satisfied degree.