The Sleep-over Artist, the slack follow-up to Thomas Beller's highly praised 1995 Seduction Theory, follows shiftless, Manhattan-born Alex Fader from age 10, a year after his father's untimely death, into his bed-hopping 20s as he searches for a surrogate family. Beller strains to impart this coming-of-age story with a near-comic contrast between urban existentialism and longing, but as he abruptly bounces Alex from relationship to relationship, essential connective tissue seems to get lost in the rumpled sheets. It's not easy to sympathize with a whiny rich kid who, between hedonistic liaisons with a variety of women on both sides of the Atlantic, diverts himself by idly working as a filmmaker/TV producer. C+
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