‘De-Lovely’ should be called ‘de worst’

“De-Lovely” is effervescent, in the manner of a cold-cuts platter that never made it out of the car at the beach picnic. Under the plastic bubble, it’s generating gas.

Kevin Kline stars as Cole Porter, one of the face-bearers on the Mount Rushmore of the Great American Popular Songbook (along with George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers). He also was one of the few songwriters who wrote both words and music. And … he was gay, at a time when it was a career killer.

Hence Porter’s career-preserving beard marriage to the older divorcee Linda Lee, here played by the younger actress Ashley Judd. Lee was too old for Porter. Judd is too young for Lee. Kline is too old for Porter. It’s perfect.

“De-Lovely” posits a cranky, elderly Porter, his legs crippled in a 1937 horseback-riding accident, watching and critiquing a movie of his life made by a director named Gabe (Jonathan Pryce). This conceit gives director Irwin Winkler license to take the biography where he wants, but his judgment is more than suspect.

At Cannes this year, media previews quickly made “De-Lovely” the standard of must-avoid cinema (“It’s bad … but not as bad as ‘De-Lovely’ “). But Kline, as an award presenter, displayed precisely the kind of charm that’s missing from Winkler’s film. Perhaps he needs a talk show.

Judd, meanwhile, is a one-woman lumber yard, beautiful and smug. Her self-righteous nobility makes Linda Porter into a martyr of heterosexuality, which itself skews the supposed “morality” of the movie – her love is so faithful and undying, Cole seems ungrateful for not jumping the fence.