If "Fur" is any indication of director Steven Shainberg's talent, he's simply going to go down in history as the man who convinced Maggie Gyllenhaal to go naked on screen in "Secretary." Frankly, this is probably enough of an accomplishment for enough men that no matter what Shainberg does post-"Secretary" he will be forgiven.

However, too many more self-indulgent, crapfests like "Fur" and nobody is going to care what he's done. "Fur" is pseudo-intellectual crap. It's not a biography of photographer Diane Arbus at all, just something Shainberg and his fellow filmmakers dreamed up based on their vast knowledge of Arbus, I suppose. Frankly, I don't really care. The film is boring, silly, and preposterous.

It features Robert Downey Jr. playing a guy with some kind of genetic disorder that causes hair to grow all over his body and make him look like a dog or some kind of very rare crossbreed, like a cross between Robert Downey Jr. and Robin Williams' back. Through her relationship with Lionel (that's Downey), Arbus (Nicole Kidman) learns to branch out and look differently at the world. Being a 50's housewife, in the shadow of her husband, Allan (Ty Burrell), Diane needs such a thing. That she appears barely indistinguishable from Julianne Moore's character in "Far From Heaven" and numerous other repressed female characters is one of the film's many unforgivable faults.

I suppose "Fur" considers itself imaginative or insightful. Oh how sad it is when such conceit turns so horribly wrong, precisely as it does here. "Fur" is basically unwatchable.