LYING IN A STRANGE woman's bed and clutching at the loose ends of his emerging consciousness, Peter O'Toole looks gloriously dissipated. His long face, rough hewn by the careless chisel of time, barely resists the pull of gravity; even his mustache threatens to slide off his upper lip like a caterpillar from a branch.

Throughout My Favorite Year, O'Toole wears his dissipation like a tuxedo impeccably tailored, if somewhat stained. Scores of elegant cocktail drunks have swayed tipsily through the history of movie comedy, but no actor has ever made high art out of being totally trashed--until now.

"My Favorite Year" is 1954, and the narrator is Benjy (Mark Linn-Baker), a junior scriptwriter-cum-gopher on an NBC comedy show. His job is to keep an eye on the show's upcoming guest star, Alan Swann (O'Toole), a faded but still popular swashbuckler whom Benjy idolizes. His task is not an easy one: a man who keeps flasks of 12-year-old scotch sewn into the lining of his coat. Swann has a propensity for appearing on tabloid covers in morally dubious positions.

The show's host is "King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna), a brash, somewhat arrogant comedian with an entourage of aggressively obsequious writers and producers. Any resemblance to Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows is, of course, purely intentional, and in many other ways the film strives to capture the innocent heyday of live TV. My Favorite Year succeeds in this respect, but except for O'Toole's manic star turn, remains at heart a tepid movie.

The film is simply too nice. The best comedy is always shot through with a subtle streak of cruelty: laughter inevitably claims a victim. Order is always sacrificed to chaos. But My Favorite Year positively wallows in benignity. The screwball comedies of the 30s could get away with that, but sheer niceness just isn't a cinematic virtue any longer. A recent example of this shift came last year in Victor/Victoria, in which Blake Edwards momentarily lost his customary sharpness and floundered around in a bland, sentimental limbo. Likewise, My Favorite Year contains too many lovable characters, too many cute situations, and in the end it becomes oppressively fluffy. Even the movie's villains corrupt teamster boss and his henchmen turns out as threatening as cigar-chomping teddy bears in pinstripes.

My Favorite Year does have some sharp, funny scenes, but their success is the result of O'Toole's wonderful performance; he provides this flimsy movie with what little backbone it has. If Lawrence of Arabia or A Lion in Winter come to mind, it is purely as an illuminating contrast: in these movies, O'Toole played characters bigger than life; here, his tawdry character is so grandly portrayed that O'Toole becomes bigger than the rest of the film. Don't let the credits fool you--O'Toole takes a Swan dive but comes up playing nothing less than O'Toole. He still has that slightly pathetic, glassy-eyed stare that refuses to acknowledge the presence of either camera or audience. But this performance has a new focus. Rather than underscoring his decline by clinging to heroic roles (as Swann does). O'Toole confronts his age directly and triumphs over it. He emerges rejuvenated from My Favorite Year--reborn, in fact, as an immensely talented comedian, even a better actor (a process that was already evident in the wonderful, underrated The Stunt Man).

Making a shambles of the Stork Club or hanging over the side of a building from a fire hose, O'Toole chews up the scenery with the gusto and relish that only British actors seem to possess. Of course, precious few crumbs are left for the rest of the cast to nibble on. They manage as best they can, but they simply don't triumph over the material. It's hard to pass judgement on Mark Linn-Baker; the timorous quality of his nice-Jewish-boy persona seems to have been written into the script, and there's little that he can do to overcome it. Joseph Bologna, Jessica Harper, Bill Macy, and Adolph Green are all fine character actors, but in this case, we've seen the characters too often before. Most of them are in the well-worn uptight-showbiz mold; the Yiddish momma schtick at Benjy's Brooklyn home is an excruciating parade of old cliches. Only one memorable move emerges from this stew of reheated vaudeville; when Benjy announces: "We Jews know about two things suffering, and where to get great Chinese food."

My Favorite Year's innocuousness has its virtues: because of the film's eagerness to please, even the stalest jokes and cliches have a short half-life, and evoke a comfortable haze of nostalgia as they decay. The directing also comes a pleasant surprise. While always irritating and oily as an actor. Richard Benjamin turns out to be quite skillful behind the camera. He doesn't overwhelm with individual touches, but he does keep things moving deftly along, and he has had the good sense to let O'Toole follow his own course. My Favorite Year was produced by Mel Brooks' production company and the old hand's influence on some of the more slapstick movements is evident.

My Favorite year teeters on the edge of mediocrity, but Peter O'Toole more than rescues it in the end. He merges seamlessly with his role like Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness used to, and could very well join their august company if he continues to develop as he's doing now--into a British comedian in the grand old style.