Be careful what you wish for, the admonition goes. You may get it.

Last year, in the wake of Independence Day, what science fiction fan couldn't have been wishing for Hollywood to finance something more substantial, more serious? You know, something without zap guns and Will Smith. (Not that zap guns and Will Smith can't be a fine end in themselves, in the hands of skilled filmmakers, but they're not generally hallmarks of "intellectual" stories, the kind of challenging, cautionary entertainment that the best SF has historically delivered.)

Well, first you got Contact, a stridently "serious" movie that was a little too pleased with itself to reach the epiphany it was clearly striving for. Entertaining but hardly satisfying, Contact may well have left you a little cold.

And now you get Gattaca, a conceptually sound SF movie that seems, finally, to have been made by thinking adults for thinking adults, without Contact's loopy posturing on the subjects of faith and religion or Independence Day's kitchen-sink reliance on special effects. It's got a great premise -- Gattaca is actually an aerospace corporation that employs only genetically perfect specimens as astronauts. Advances in genetic science, you see, now allow unborn children to be engineered with only the best features of both parents. As Vincent, Ethan Hawke plays an "in-valid" -- that is, a naturally conceived and birthed child whose genetic deficiencies have been precisely cataloged. Deemed likely to keel over by the age of 30, a victim of heart troubles, Vincent is that oldest SF archetype -- the little boy who dreams of reaching the stars though he's told he doesn't have the right stuff for the trip. He's only suited for one job at Gattaca -- janitor (his boss is Ernest Borgnine!).

Like Contact, Gattaca wastes precious time by dwelling on the main character's backstory in flashbacks, including a traumatic rivalry between Vincent and his genetically superior brother Anton that involved the two of them swimming out into the ocean as far as they dared before turning back. His history, of course, will return to haunt him.

But far more intriguing than Vincent's psychological profile is Gattaca itself, realized in large part through on-location shooting in a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. There don't seem to be any right angles at Gattaca, a sleek office complex where dronelike young men spend their days typing cryptically at tiny computer terminals while rockets arc into the sky overhead. It's a very chilly setting, and the presence of Uma Thurman as the nominal love interest doesn't generate much heat. Instead, we're encouraged to brood on the stifling atmosphere of a future world that prizes genetic fitness over human spirit.

And we're expected to root for Vincent, who has infiltrated this world by purchasing the identity of Jerome, an athlete turned paraplegic in a botched suicide attempt. Since astronauts need the use of both of their legs, Jerome now has no hope of continued employment at Gattaca, despite his impeccable genes. By carrying a supply of Jerome's blood and urine with him to confound the various genetic tests he's subjected to on a daily basis, it's relatively easy for Vincent to pass as Jerome day-in and day-out. You see, because Gattaca sees its employees as nothing much more than a string of attractive genetic characteristics, nobody notices that Vincent really doesn't look a thing like Jerome, as long as he keeps track of all of the millions of skin cells and loose hair follicles that could slough off his body and give away his identity. But when a murder investigation (!?) begins to focus on Gattaca's employees, Vincent is under more pressure. He struggles mightily to keep a secret of his true identity in the final days before his mission launches and he leaves this planet forever.

Are you starting to sense that there's actually too much story here for Gattaca's own good?

All of this looks great. Writer and director Andrew Niccol (born in New Zealand, with commercial work to his credit in Great Britain) has managed to bring some awfully big guns to bear on his debut project. Cinematographer Slawomir Idziak, for instance, is best known for his work with Krzysztof Kieslowski -- Idziak shot The Double Life of Veronique and Blue, and his work on Gattaca can't help but recall the far more haunting imagery of those much simpler pictures. His work here is, nonetheless, gorgeous. Composer Michael Nyman and production designer Jan Roelfs, both of them veterans of many a Peter Greenaway production, also play a big part in establishing the mood.

What does the film in is its own earnestness, and its tendency to meander. Gattaca is at its best when it's simplest. There are at least two scenes here of ferociously high tension -- one involves a blood test, the other a struggle to the top of a helical staircase -- that recall nothing so much as Alfred Hitchcock working at the peak of his abilities. I don't make the comparison lightly. In the moments where Gattaca really kicks in, it's grip-the-handrest-and-squirm-in-your-seat time at the moviehouse. Problem is there are far more scenes that just don't work, that tax Hawke and Thurman past their limited range, or that are just downright corny. (The bit about Vincent and his brother and the swimming contest? It becomes a crucial plot point late in the film.)

In fact, Gattaca so singlemindedly pursues its thesis about an obsessively soulless society that it forgets to breathe life into its own characters. Hawke doesn't have much to grab onto in the script -- his character is mostly explained to us in (ack!) voiceover. Thurman, such a promising screen presence when she debuted some 10 years ago, is lovely and completely ineffective in an underwritten role. Only a sour Jude Law, as Vincent's grudging accomplice, makes an impression.

The best way to appreciate Gattaca is probably as a parable about discrimination. That's the interpretation that makes the most sense, and the one that explains the considerable degree of solemnity Niccol musters in telling his story. Problem is, it's too solemn, and too reliant on generic characters and schematic plot devices. Niccol wants to condemn the inhuman assumptions of a society that defines people solely by their genetic make-up. It's a little ironic that his film, which boasts such an impressive art-house pedigree, has turned out as pallid and programmatic as the future world it abhors.