Honey: Dance drama. Starring Jessica Alba, Mekhi Phifer and David Moscow. Directed by Bille Woodruff. (PG-13. 98 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

There's no point complaining that "Honey" is a tired reworking of an old formula, because it's intended for a young audience that doesn't know the formula. They'll think this is new: A young dancer, who wants to light up the sky, takes her passion and makes it happen, on the avenue I'm taking you to, 42nd Street. Or in this case, 149th Street. Honey is going out there a youngster, but she has got to come back a star.

Call it cliched or call it time-honored, this formula has resulted in lots of good movies. The trick is in making something of the young woman (it's never a man). And the trick there is in making her ambition so overpowering that it gives velocity to the film and becomes the unifying energy behind all the disparate musical numbers. The girl's drive is the one thing a movie like this has to get right. "Honey" gets it wrong.

The star is Jessica Alba -- think Britney Spears, without the wit -- who appears in the first scene tending bar at the end of a long nightclub shift. In her first shot, she is smiling, absolutely delighted at nothing in particular. Then someone orders two beers, and she smiles again. Two beers! Isn't that great? Director Bille Woodruff does everything he can in these first shots to make us notice that Alba has nice teeth, but in the process he also communicates something about the character she's playing and the movie he's making: She's corny, and his movie's dishonest.

How about a tired girl? How about a girl who can't wait to get out of this joint? How about a girl who is dying to make something of herself, who knows she can dance circles around everybody and can't believe she's stuck in this dump? That's someone we could get behind -- someone who's going to make it or explode. Instead, in "Honey," we're told that the title character is ambitious, but we see her doing absurd things: A music video director gives her his card. She calls him once and gets blown off by a receptionist -- so she throws away the card.

Still, Honey has a goal in life. She wants to be one of the gyrating women who can be seen in the background in hip-hop videos. Apparently, in 2003,

that actually constitutes a goal. Her mother asks Honey why she doesn't concentrate on ballet (which proves that Mom saw "Flashdance"), but Honey is determined. She wants to do pelvic thrusts for a living -- not the staccato (i.e. vulgar) pelvic thrusts offered by rival dancers, but flowing, ostensibly artistic pelvic thrusts.

Her career is launched when a director (David Moscow) puts her in a video,

and soon he's also giving her work as a choreographer. But just as things are going well on the career front, the movie shifts gears on us: Honey also wants to be a social worker. She wants to buy a community center and teach hip-hop to at-risk kids in the 'hood. The kids are snotty to her, but she keeps smiling. (The teeth again, very nice.) Then at one point, she seems to get through to one little boy, and the soundtrack starts playing something like the beginning of "Close to You," by the Carpenters.

Indeed, for all the hip-hop acts that appear here -- Missy Elliott, Ginuwine and Silkk, among others -- the late Karen Carpenter would have fit right in. If anything, the movie is cornier than Karen, and no one here sings nearly as well. "Honey" invites us, not to share in a character's journey, but to have an audience with one young woman's physical and spiritual loveliness. That's not just bogus, it's boring.

-- Advisory: This film contains mild violence, mild sexual situations and drug innuendo.