MOVIE REVIEW : Erotic Thriller 'Sliver' Leaves a Lot to Be Desired : This wrongheaded version of Ira Levin's pulp novel may be about voyeurism, but it doesn't provide much to watch.

A funnier approach would have been even better. Is it really such a deep-dish revelation that we all "like to watch"? The people who made "Sliver" are mesmerized by their own prurience. They don't really get into the kicky nuttiness of spying on other people, of lording it over other people's secrecies. The multichannel action on the video monitors is surprisingly perfunctory. (Imagine what Hitchcock or DePalma, or even Warhol, might have done with dozens of screens winking their private dramas at us simultaneously.) There's no emotional pull to the neo-Gothic world in "Sliver," where people connect up by video monitor and computer with occasional forays in the flesh. It's no news that we like to watch. But first you must give us something worth watching.