Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy (Millenium Entertainment)

Nicole Kidman cannot pull off a southern accent. Nor can Zac Efron or David Oyelowo. John Cusack especially cannot do a southern accent.

Actually, in The Paperboy, a ridiculous film in which the accents are among the least batty effects, only Matthew McConaughey gets the dialect right, if only because his naturally louche Texan drawl is close enough to fitting the swampland of South Florida.

Lee Daniels, whose previous film, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire was a punishing, though moving look at street life in New York at the end of the 1980s, has only amped it up since then. The Paperboy, adapted from a 1995 novel by Pete Dexter, is a two-hour carnival of seedy behavior, exposed flesh, bloodletting, sexual humiliation and self-loathing. All of it is excruciating.

McConaughey, in the latest of a series of oddball roles he’s played this year, is Ward Jansen, a supposedly hot-shit reporter in Miami who comes home, where his father runs the local rag. Accompany Ward is a colleague, played by Oyelowo, who doesn’t exactly get the warmest reception in a place and time where to be black is to also be the help. The racial slurs come early and often.

Ward’s purpose is to write one of those big, investigative pieces with the aim of springing a wrongly convicted man out of prison, in this instance a horny rube called Hillary Van Wetter. As Van Wetter, Cusack is game for the physical tribulations the character provides, but the phony accent is just cartoonish and distracting. And then there’s Kidman’s character, Charlotte Bless, a lusty creature whose life goal is to shack up with an ex-con.

But at the center of all of it is Ward’s younger brother, Jack, a 20-year-old layabout played by a usually shirtless Efron, who attracts the plurality of the camera’s attention. Young Jack is smitten with vampy Charlotte, and while Daniels gives his two most attractive stars plenty of time together, there’s little by the way of chemistry, let alone the seaminess called for by the subject matter. People who have done any background research on The Paperboy might have also seen reports of a scene in which Charlotte tends to Jack after he’s sustained a nasty wound. It’s all of a piece.

In fact, the characters’ actual purpose is secondary to the myriad situations Daniels can put them in. But any genuine sensuality or terror is washed out by the sheer gratuitousness of it all. Daniels is a storyteller stuck on 11, and there’s no sense in expecting any modulation. Only Macy Gray, as Ward’s and Jack’s childhood maid, offers a softer tale, but her role is limited to simply framing this swamp noir.

McConaughey, though, is trying. And in a remarkable year in which the actor has rediscovered his inner creep with admirable performances as a wily prosecutor, an aging stripper and a monstrous killer, Ward Jensen fits right in with the rest of the weirdos. He is hardly a paragon of journalism; in fact, anyone expecting The Paperboy‘s A-plot to offer a solid lesson about newspapering will be sorely disappointed. (There is, however, a very keen observation about viral stories.)

But not even McConaughey’s best efforts can keep The Paperboy out of the muck. Not that Daniels wants to stay out. There’s so much grime, filth and general sleaze here, that when the credits finally roll, you might need a shower.

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The Paperboy
Written and directed by Lee Daniels, adapted from the book by Pete Dexter
With Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, John Cusack, Macy Gray and David Oyelowo.
Rated R for bad people doing bad things.
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema and Angelika Film Center at Mosaic.