Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing – especially if he shops at Barneys. The dreadful and irrelevant new “Alfie” is the story of one such creature (Jude Law), a metrosexual monster on the hunt in New York. Bristling in sleek Gucci fur, he prowls the clubs, cafes, and Chanel boutiques of Manhattan, gobbling up our lady folk with his bright, white teeth.

More sinister yet, his smooth talk is coated in that potent erotic narcotic, the British accent: “your derriere looks really rather ravishing from this vantage point.” Prada lace-ups and convoluted alliterative flattery? What woman could resist?

Plenty, as it happens. “Alfie” may take place nominally in New York City, but its true imaginative provenance is Hollywood. And so the naughty little bachelor will learn, in the mushiest possible terms, that it’s wrong – wrong! – to sleep around, to be selfish, to be vain, to never commit, to get people pregnant. Wrong to value clothes over caring! Wrong to sleep with your best friend’s girl! And so very, very wrong to take for granted that cute, keeping-it-real Marisa Tomei (Julie) – infinitely more so since she’s a humble single mom. Look how you’ve upset her little one, you bad man. Shame on you, Alfie!

Painfully obvious as they are, these are all fine lessons, but – corblimey! – would a dash of real wit, style, or edge have been too much to ask? Oh, “Alfie” has “style” of a cheap and easy kind. Mr. Law cavorts in exquisite suits and darts around SoHo on a Vespa, hipster ride par excellence. Despite subsisting on the wages of a limousine driver with a weakness for Yves Saint Laurent cufflinks, Alfie lives in a decent-sized, comfortably shabby downtown loft (which, in the utterly clueless value system of the movie, is a cause of embarrassment to its tenant).

The various bodacious babes he meets are likewise dressed to the nines, 10s, 11s, and 12s, though costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor is no Patricia Field. Flip genders, dumb everything down, and “Alfie” plays like the shoddiest episode of “Sex and the City” ever made.

As for wit, “Alfie” one-ups your average rerun of “Alf,” but not by much. This remake of the swinging 1960s classic starring Michael Caine really ought to have been written by Simon Doonan and directed by Neil La Bute. “Alfie,” alas, has been defanged by a writer from “Murphy Brown” and the director of “Baby Boom.”

There is one smashing, if unintentional, joke: When Alfie begins to learn the error of his ways, he undergoes a brief costume change. Out go the suits so tight you could scuba dive in them, in come the layered T-shirts and cable-knit cashmere hoodies. The latter, burnt orange and poofy, nearly transforms Mr. Law into the Cowardly Lion. It signals a newfound cuddly-wuddliness. Hilarious!

The arc of the story goes like this: Speaking directly to the camera, Alfie introduces us to a day in the life of the expat ubercad. After bragging about his ability to pull off pink (only if you can “ooze masculinity”), he moves on to his shagilicious exploits. He tosses a frustrated wife (Jane Krakowski) in the back seat of his limo, mashes a bartender (Nia Long) on top a pool table, gets down with a hottie (Sienna Miller) who’s crazy like a fox, and takes up with a vintage Park Avenue sex kitten (Susan Sarandon).

Everything goes wrong, Alfie begins to question his lifestyle, and so on. An unforgivably asinine scene has him chatting up a geezer full of life lessons in the bathroom of an STD clinic (this develops into an unforgivably asinine subplot). And as for the series of meaningful billboards inserted in the background of Alfie’s misadventures – SEARCH, WISH, DESIRE – it’s enough to make you yearn for the return of those stupid art cows.

What’s it all about? Mostly, giving Mr. Law a forum for his considerable charms. He does what he can with the material, poor chap, struggling as he must against a director whose major storytelling device is the freeze-frame accompanied by exposition.