Considering the number of flops she's wracked up (Intersection, Last Dance, Diabolique, Gloria) since her breakthrough role in Basic Instinct, it's a bit surprising that Beautiful Joe marks the first post-stardom Sharon Stone vehicle not to receive widespread theatrical release. It's fitting, however: While Stone has appeared in a mess of duds, nothing she's done has been quite as shameless or appalling as Beautiful Joe, a toxic piece of whimsy that ranks among the worst films of 2000. In a performance that recalls the broader, more unbearable work of Melanie Griffith, Stone stars as a shrill, overbearing Southern belle who received the nickname "Hush" for reasons that soon become agonizingly apparent. Down and out and on the run from her bookie, Stone stumbles upon the brain-tumor-stricken title character (Billy Connolly), the sort of cuddly, asexual every-sprite that Robin Williams has made a noxious but profitable career out of playing. But just when it seems that Beautiful Joe's mixture of shrill comedy, unearned pathos, and hackneyed drama can't get worse, writer-director Stephen Metcalfe introduces characters like Stone's catatonic son and Ian Holm's flower-loving, nose-eating bookie, who send the film crashing to new lows. Before you can say "heartwarming comedy-drama for the whole family," Connolly, Stone, and her two children head out for a life-affirming road trip to Vegas, where Connolly continues to bond with Stone's children and Stone learns a valuable life lesson while engaging in a career's worth of histrionic overacting. Even a film with genuine depth would have difficulty giving an affable, happy-go-lucky character a potentially fatal illness without seeming cruel or manipulative, but Beautiful Joe never threatens to approach mediocrity, let alone greatness. As it is, Connolly's narratively convenient brain tumor—in one scene, he even dutifully marks off in a datebook the days until his death—merely succeeds in making a creepy film even worse. "Lahf shore does stank sometahms!" squeals Stone early in the film, following a particularly disheartening run of bad luck. Beautiful Joe, on the other hand, stinks from start to finish.