When unexplained wardrobe changes are a film’s chief distraction, that’s usually a sign the director is trying too hard to be "independent." That and a lowercase title. Tom (Fab Filippo), antihero of Canadian filmmaker Gary Burns’s waydowntown, can’t keep the same shirt and tie on from scene to scene. It’s a mystery, and the only one in this glib trifle.

Tom works in a vast self-contained downtown business complex, where he and three co-workers have made a bet as to who can survive the longest without stepping outdoors. Sanity is the big problem, with Tom resorting to dope to keep him going, along with fantasies about superheroes and the occasional stranger lifting her blouse. The moral side is embodied by sad office mate Bradley (Canadian indie icon Don McKellar), who’s not in on the bet but staples motivational slogans onto his chest. The jump cuts, sudden inserts, and loopy parallel editing induce a caffeinated buzz but can’t conceal the banality — the notion that modern times are dehumanizing (metaphor alert: Tom keeps an ant farm) has been a movie cliché since, well, Modern Times. waydowntown was pulled from release after September 11 because of images of falling bodies, but this kind of sophomoric indulgence is never in style.