The opening scenes slide you into a warm bath of affection. Paul (Jason Biggs) is a working-class, small-town kid who wins a scholarship to a New York City college. He's the first person in his family to ever go beyond high school, and his folks are so proud they throw a bon voyage party with all the trimmings, rolled-up diplomas festooning every battered kitchen pantry door and a big cake with thick doodles of green frosting congratulating the "college man." It's one of those gatherings where the characters' bonds are so strong and assured that nobody has to acknowledge them -- they're as natural as breathing. A bunch of generations -- Paul's friends, relatives, neighbors, his parents' friends -- all mix together easily and happily. It all comes together when Paul joins his little sister and her friends in the kitchen to do some dancing that they've probably copied off of MTV. The way she looks at him, you can tell she thinks he's the coolest thing ever.

Paul isn't so sure. Later that night he admits to his dad (Dan Aykroyd, whose warmth has expanded exponentially with the pounds he's packed on) that he's afraid he won't fit in with the sophisticates of the big city where everyone is sarcastic "like on that 'Seinfeld' show." His dad assures that he'll do fine, that people are essentially good; all they're looking for is someone to listen to their story and really be interested.

The cold shower begins as soon as Paul hits New York. Everyone rebuffs his overtures and nobody laughs at his jokes, though they do make fun of the way he dresses and his attempts to make friends, even the slang he's picked up from his dad. His three roommates are spoiled rich shits who make it impossible for Paul to study, even though his scholarship depends on his maintaining a B+ average. His literature professor, Alcott (Greg Kinnear, oozing smarm), is a tenured prick who would rather make fun of his students than teach them.

The only person remotely kind to him is Dora (Mena Suvari) who's another outsider in Manhattan: She's from one of the other boroughs. Dora is struggling to keep body and soul together by working as a waitress in an upscale strip club, hustling to get off her shift so she can catch the last train home. Financially, she's hanging by a thread and emotionally she's not doing much better. Dora is the semester's cupcake of choice for Alcott, who doesn't spare her feelings in class, claiming that his job depends on keeping their affair a secret. When Paul ends up moving into a room at an animal shelter and Dora winds up staying with him, they seem to have stumbled upon the only creatures in the city even less protected than they.

Naturally, the movie charts how Paul and Dora become friends, allies and finally sweethearts (lovers seems too dramatic a term for these cuddly cuties). But it's really about being despised, broke and alone in New York. The kids in "Loser" are a year or so older than the high school kids of Heckerling's other movies, and college freshmen who see "Loser" may experience some of the same discomfort that the initial teen audiences of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" did. The slights we experience at that age can make us wince even years later. (When I was a junior at a college full of rich kids, a sophomore who used to ask me for music recommendations refused to let me borrow an album because, he said, my stereo wasn't good enough.)

"Loser" makes it clear that Heckerling recalls every one of those slights. In the movie's production notes she's quoted as saying, "When I was in college, I didn't even know I was a teenager -- I just knew that I was struggling to get money for tuition. My whole life revolved around money -- how I was going to get it, how not to spend it, how I was going to get more credits for less money, what I was going to do if they raised the tuition." When you're among kids who use school as an excuse to party since their college tuition is merely a sliver of their parents' wad, and who look down on anyone not in the same position, that predicament stings. (Paul's roomies, played by Zak Orth, Jimmi Simpson and Thomas Sadoski, are like the hell-spawn of Philip Seymour Hoffman's preppie swine in "The Talented Mr. Ripley." The costume designer Mona May provides this trio with hilarious ensembles, club-wear equivalents of prep tastelessness.)

We've become so used to movies that use New York as a playground for romantic comedy that you may keep expecting it here long after it's apparent that Heckerling has no interest in delivering it. Her vision of Manhattan is as constricting and off-putting as her vision of the malls and suburban strips of Southern California were invitations to teenage freedom in "Fast Times" and "Clueless." With the exception of a stray shot of a Soho bakery and a leafy park, cinematographer Rob Hahn presents the city as alternately gray and garish, a warren of forbidding buildings, crummy video stores and delis. When Paul and Dora stand in the middle of Times Square at night, neon has never looked less inviting.

The only way for people who aren't rich to have any fun is in this New York is to beg, borrow or steal it, literally. On a daylong spree, Paul and Dora go to a museum courtesy of her student pass, swipe a loaf of bread for lunch and sneak into a Broadway show at intermission. They have a ball, but Heckerling never lets us forget it's all by virtue of their wits.

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