In the insistently strange Colour Me Kubrick, John Malkovich plays Alan Conway, a con man who bilks people by claiming he's director Stanley Kubrick.

I can't think of a compelling reason to see Colour Me Kubrick other than the fact that it's weirdly funny and chronicles the bizarre lengths to which some people will go to make fools of others. The movie is based on a true story.

Colour Me Kubrick builds its one-joke antics around Conway's bravado. Speaking in a mangled American accent, the outlandishly gay Conway knows little about Kubrick's work. He does, however, understand that many people go wild over the possibility that an important director might put them in a movie. Such gullibility constitutes the basis for most of what transpires.

Unlike Conway, Colour Me Kubrick has a connection to the late director. According to Variety, writer Anthony Frewin worked with Kubrick. So did director Brian Cook.

The story includes at least one other real character. Frank Rich, New York Times drama critic at the time of all this criminal activity, was approached in a London restaurant by Conway. Played here by William Hootkins, Rich sniffs out the fraud.

If Malkovich has a motor that powers his weirdness, he left it running for the duration of this movie, which ends rather abruptly, almost as if the filmmakers ran out of funds.

Still, Colour Me Kubrick earns a place on the shelf where all the oddballs reside, defying us to come up with reasons to justify their idiosyncratic existences - and perhaps not caring whether we do.