EDGE New York City

Thank Heaven for bad movies. Without them we’d have a shortage of jokes, impersonations, cocktail chatter, and, increasingly, stage shows. After a plethora of decades-old cult-movie parodies - usually gay-friendly flicks like Valley of the Dolls and usually performed in drag - we’ve hit the mainstream, and the ’90s. Last year brought us the hysterical Showgirls: The Best Movie Ever Made, Ever! At the UCB theater in Chelsea, and now we have Point Break Live!, at La Tea Theater in SoHo. Whereas Showgirls poked fun of the film and its infamous writer, Joe Eszterhas, using an Oprah-interview format, Point Break takes that shamefully bad Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze "100 Percent Pure Adrenaline" flick and turns it into performance of bad art.

Surfers spray the audience with water, bank robbers force you onto the floor, vendors offer meatball sandwiches, and blood will be spilled, perhaps on you. But the biggest, and cleverest, stunt of the evening is in the casting choice of Johnny Utah (Reeves in the film). The "director," Kathryn Bigelow (Scout Durwood), auditions members of the audience, and the winner reads his lines from the Production Assistant (Amber Hubert and Christie Waldon alternate in the role). It’s a wickedly funny conceit, as, in the film, Reeves is terrible even by Reeves standards. The more unprepared the "actor," the funnier the gimmick - in truth, the guy I saw seemed a far more excellent performer than Mr. Matrix.

Sticking close to the film script (you don’t need to write jokes when the writing’s already laughable), Utah’s hired as a private detective in Los Angeles, where a slew of bank robberies by a group calling themselves the Ex Presidents are probably surfer dudes. He and his older partner, Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey in the movie, here played by George Spielvogel), set their sights on the beach and Bodhi (Swayze in the flick, here, Topher Mikels), the group’s spiritual guru and criminal mastermind. Utah also falls for Tyler (Lori Petty, film, Izzy Abeyta, play). In between the amazingly dimwitted plot are car chases (re-imagined on a video screen), parachute jumping - they dangle the actors - and a final, splashy confrontation between Utah and Bodhi.

A lot of what happens for two hours is quite enjoyable. The actors, especially the group of homoerotic beach bums, seem to be having a ball (the heterosexual dudes in the audience were, like, totally into it), and Mikels does a nice Valley Boy take. The "actor" playing Utah is knocked around, dangled in the air, and forced to take a lot of quick stage direction. You gotta admire the work that went into staging the show, and the quick wits of the actors to make sure he doesn’t flail about. The show’s a bit too long (the intermission is abruptly awkward), and a few more improvs or jokes about Reeves and Swayze could have been worked in nicely. The only big mistake was the choice to have a child actress play Tyler. Whatever the real director, Jamie Hook, was going for doesn’t work, and Tyler’s scenes are uncomfortable and unfunny.

I don’t know how Point Break Live will play to those not familiar with the film - I rented the DVD the night before, and it was one of the few times I can say that sitting through a movie was grueling homework - but the theater was packed. Be prepared to get messed up: Not only did I come home with "blood" stains on my face, I had real beer on my clothes; the result of being forced to sit on the theater’s stage where the guy next to me had spilled his Rolling Rock. If you’re not into audience participation, you’re best to stay away. But if you’re into making the most out of dismally bad cinema (or, depending on your perspective, kick-ass art, dude), this is the play for you. On a side note, they give each night’s Johnny Utah a tape of the show. Heck, with a little luck, and lot of bad acting, you may just be the next Keanu.

Through February 25. At the La Tea Theater (CSV Cultural Center), 107 Suffolk Street. For more information, visit www.theatermania.com.