Humans are too enamored of their intellectual progress, according to "Human Nature." They'd be happier naked, free and uninhibited, romping through a forest. Civilization, after all, is too … too inhibiting. Charlie Kaufman, overly acclaimed for his "Being John Malkovich" screenplay, delivers this time a live-action adult cartoon that is smarmy and cynical in concluding: Shuck it all. Directed by video and commercial-maker Michael Gondry, "Human Nature" entwines "Tarzan," "The Wild Child" and "Pygmalion" in a tale of faux intellectual sexcapades. Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins) sits in limbo, a bullet through his forehead, as the story flashes back. He was a 35-year-old sexually inexperienced scientist who lived by the credo, "When in doubt, don't do what you really want to do." For a while. His parents (Robert Forster and Mary Kay Place) have a philosophy, too, expressed by the mother: "Never wallow in the filth of instinct." Nathan, who supposedly has bad eyes (mentioned, then ignored), encounters three new species among humans. One is Puff (Rhys Ifans), raised as a simian in a forest. Nathan places him in a laboratory glass cage, teaches him English and wraps an anti-sexual-stimulation collar around his neck. Sexual responses result in zapping, but appetites are irrepressible. Nathan concurrently and tentatively bonds with Lila Jute (Patricia Arquette), who herself lived in a forest from the time she was 12 and developed a hormonal imbalance that resulted in horrendous levels of body hair. As an adult, she re-emerged in civilization as a nature-loving author. Only Lila's confidant and electrolysis practitioner, Louise (Rosie Perez), knows for sure how chronic the patient's hair condition is. Lila has Nathan's attention for a while, but he's distracted by his manipulative lab assistant, Gabrielle (Miranda Otto). "Human Nature" suggests that life is controlled by a single instinct and perverted by deprivation — that is, civilization. Puff is worse for his encounters with education and repression. Lila, despite being played as a smart and generous woman by the attractive Arquette, inexplicably offers no competition to the transparent Gabrielle. Central character Nathan is an increasingly unsympathetic and off-putting figure whose behavior makes ever-less sense as the story progresses. He isn't so much a person as he is a model of repression who handles liberation worse than Puff handles civilization. The story doesn't develop organically. It's hammered this way and that to support a thesis it makes unpersuasively. It strives for originality, but in the end it seems no fresher than the granddaddy of romantic cliches — the lighted-candles-in-the-bathroom tub scene.

'Human Nature'

Director: Michael Gondry Stars: Tim Robbins, Patricia Arquette, Rhys Ifans MPAA Rating: R, for sexuality/nudity and language

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