Scooby (Mark Webber) is the object of Toby's (Paul Giamatti) documentary. Yes, that's Mike from "American Movie" holding the camera.

If you've seen "Welcome to the Dollhouse" or "Happiness," you have a pretty good idea whether or not you'll like "Storytelling," New Jersey filmmaker Todd Solondz' third feature. It features all his trademarks: sharp dialogue, characters who hide dark secrets behind ordinary facades, and an almost Farrelly-like obsession with the unspeakables of human existence. He is a bit like the weirdo cousin who likes to smell old socks and rummage around in the back corners of your closet. You know, the guy that digs up used condoms from under the couch and waves them around at the family reunion.

"Storytelling" is composed of two parts. "Fiction" centers around a creative writing college class and deliciously lays out all the aimless cruelty that aspiring artists are known to exhibit in such settings. Leo Fitzpatrick plays a student with Cerebral Palsy who is about to lose his girlfriend Vi (Selma Blair) to their Pulitzer-winning professor (Robert Wisdom). In a playful bit of self-reference, prissy students dissect Vi's short story with much the same adjectives that critics have used to eviscerate Solondz: "Mysogynistic!" they howl. "Racist, hollow, and disgusting!"

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The first half of "Storytelling" also features the now-famous "red box" which Solondz used to cover up a particularly explicit scene to avoid the NC-17 rating. At the press conference following the screening, Solondz admitted that he has come to embrace this device -- unlike, he said, the cut scenes in "Eyes Wide Shut," his audience is very well aware of what is deemed inappropriate thanks to the "Soviet-style" censorship. We know what it is we're not allowed to see.

The film's second part, "Non-Fiction," is about a documentary film project in which director Toby (Paul Giamatti) follows the prototypical stoner youth Scooby (Mark Webber) and his family. John Goodman, as the father, is as good as always, but Jonathan Osser steals the show with his hair-raising cruelty as Scooby's vicious brother Mikey.

The two parts of "Storytelling" relate through their themes. Through Solondz fun-house-of-horrors mirror, questions emerge about the intersections of reality and fiction, about exploitation in life, fiction, movies, and, specifically, Todd Solondz movies. All of which, of course, is served with twice the recommended dosage of abuse, revenge, murder, teenage homosexuality, drugs, and twisted sex.

Solondz can make you feel lousy for belonging to the same species as his characters, but he is very adept at shifting his own affections and manipulating the audience's, leaving you concerned for murderers and worse. The results are not pretty, but the film is fresh, funny, upsetting, and probably, in its own wicked way, good for you.