well , there's nothing like missing a fad by a few years to show how * really * behind the curve you are . permanent midnight , the new film about the rise and fall . . . well , mostly the fall . . . of tv writer jerry stahl should prove to be the final nail in the short-lived , and now painful-to-watch , genre : the drug movie . perhaps best known as the chief influence behind the tv show " alf , " midnight is a simplistic retelling of stahl's tell-all autobiography . ben stiller , the only remotely passable part of this film , plays stahl with gusto , but twenty minutes of stiller going berserk as a strung-out junkie are more than enough . sadly , that's all this movie is : a whopping 85 minutes of stiller on heroin . there's precious little about his life before or after his addiction . it's just a few pages out of the life of a junkie . and i couldn't have cared less . plot development ? ha ! first-time director veloz obviously feels it's beneath him . maybe the worst part of midnight is that it's told completely in flashback , as stahl reminisces to some blonde girl who picks him up at a fast food joint . played by maria bello , this outta-nowhere character is so devoid of , well , of * anything * that my cat could have played her with the same conviction . bello had best start rethinking that " er " departure , * pronto * . i won't waste any more time droning about how bad permanent midnight is . but i will say one thing : at least it explains a lot about " alf . " 
