REVENGE OF THE COOTIE GIRLS

The knockabout title, a throwback to Sharyn McCrumb's salad days, is the best thing about All News Network producer Robin Hudson's third adventure, a Girls' Night Out gone mad. Back in the Big Apple for Halloween, Robin heads out for an evening of barhopping, dress-up, backchat, and female bonding with her old buddies Tamayo, the clown producer; Claire, the got-it-all anchor; Sally, the bald witch; and Kathy, Robin's dewy-eyed new intern. When Kathy doesn't show up at their rendezvous but instead phones on the cellular to say that she's hiding in some guy's closet, Robin smells a rat—but she can't imagine how her pinball odyssey among Manhattan's nightspots will send her back to memories of (1) her high-school days in Ferrous, Minnesota, when she and Julie Goomey, dubbed the cootie girls by class style-setters Mary MacCosham and Sis Fanning, fought back to semipopularity; and (2) her first weeks in New York, when she fell in love with the city while unwittingly getting involved in a mob hit gone wrong. The zany cast provides scattered laughs, but trying to follow the plot is about as worthwhile as watching the heavens for Skylab detritus. Not even Hayter (Nice Girls Finish Last, 1996, etc.) can pull off this mishmash of Bergson, Proust, and Leona Helmsley's New York. It's like listening to somebody else's dreams. (Author tour)