Maybe director Curtiss Clayton shouldn’t have shown the snippet of American Psycho on a TV screen at the beginning of Rick, his postmodern-day updating of Verdi’s Rigoletto, since it raises expectations that the level of antic nihilism and black humor he’s mustered will be sustained. Rick O’Lette (Bill Pullman) humiliates a young woman (Sandra Oh, deserving more screen time) who applies for a job at his Image Corporation, and she curses him. Rick laughs the incident off over martinis with Duke (Aaron Stanford), the young-squirt company head. But of course it comes back to haunt him, especially when a contract killer tempts him to knock off Duke, who’s been hitting on Rick’s daughter on the Internet. Clayton and screenwriter Daniel Handler (of Lemony Snicket fame) make the mistake of trying to turn Pullman’s delightful jerk into a secretly wounded sympathetic soul. That and the Christmas setting turn Rick into a version of Scrooged with no laughs when it’s not like an opera with no music but lots of soap. (100 minutes)