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Dedication ***

Where do the children's book team of Rudy Holt (the illustrator) and Henry Roth (the wordsmith) go for inspiration? How 'bout a dark, sleazy porn theater? In Dedication, actor-turned-director Justin Theroux's artsy slice of New York nuttiness and love, Rudy and Henry - played, respectively, by Tom Wilkinson and Billy Crudup - are responsible for a string of kid-lit successes.

Where do the children's book team of Rudy Holt (the illustrator) and Henry Roth (the wordsmith) go for inspiration? How 'bout a dark, sleazy porn theater?

In Dedication, actor-turned-director Justin Theroux's artsy slice of New York nuttiness and love, Rudy and Henry - played, respectively, by Tom Wilkinson and Billy Crudup - are responsible for a string of kid-lit successes. Like Ratso Rizzo and Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, like Harold and Maude in Harold and Maude, they're a mismatched pair, but a mismatched pair who need and feed off each other. So when Rudy dies, the already xenophobic, compulsive, cynical and scared Henry retreats further into his shell: a shell in a cool downtown loft, laid out for optimum sulking and monster movie viewing.

Enter Lucy (Mandy Moore), an artist recruited by Henry's publisher to get him going again - to get the new book finished. And so begins an oddball, alternately amusing and creepy relationship, full of passive-aggressive banter over bad diner food, talks in the park, walks on the beach and the weirdly plaintive strains of Deerhoof and a couple of other indie bands.

Crudup is great as the painfully messed-up Henry, and Moore is pretty - but pretty vacant - as the foisted-on-him collaborator/babysitter/muse. Not sure what Theroux - who displays an appreciative knowledge of idiosyncratic '60s and '70s flicks - was thinking when he cast the plush-toylike singer and actress. But Dedication works anyway, thanks to Theroux's jumping visuals and Crudup's jumpy performance.

With Billy Crudup, Mandy Moore and Tom Wilkinson. Distributed by the Weinstein Co. 1 hour, 51 mins. R (profanity, sex, adult themes). Playing at Ritz at the Bourse.

- Steven Rea