TRACKS
1. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
2. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
3. Against Me! - Thrash Unreal
4. Alicia Keys - No One
5. My Teenage Stride - To Live & Die in the Airport Lounge
6. Arcade Fire - Keep the Car Running
7. Rihanna - Umbrella
8. Nelly Furtado - Say it Right
9. KRS-One & Marley Marl - Rising to the Top
10. Britney Spears - Piece of Me

Every year, dozens of films are scripted, shot, and then promptly scuppered, victims of fickle studio heads. Some of these films are true turkeys, the bread-and-butter of the direct-to-video market. Some of them, though, are masterpieces. The Rob Schneider vehicle Bill Becomes Law is the latter.

I saw Bill when I was covering the Little Venice Film Festival for the blog ClingFilm. Little Venice, for those of you out-of-the-know, is a small town in South Dakota, famous for its triangle ice cream and "toxic clouds." Bill Becomes Law screened only once, to four people, but every one of those people went on to make movies of their own. (I'm halfway through mine as we speak.)

The premise of Bill is simple: Schneider plays lonely postman Bill Williamson, who lives alone in a grimy studio apartment in Huguenot, Mississippi. He has no friends, no family, no prospects for an interesting future. One day, while on his rounds, a limo pulls up alongside him. A window opens, and an old man says, "Reginald, is that you?" As it turns out, Williamson has been mistaken for billionaire playboy Reginald Law, who's recently gone missing. He's whisked up to the Law mansion where his life changes almost immediately: he's pampered with gifts, he has his choice of 27 sports cars, and he enjoys the affections of Law's longtime girlfriend Alexis (Tara Reid, in the role she was born to play).

This presents Bill with a problem: he's started to genuinely fall in love with Alexis, but he can't bear living a lie. Should he tell her about the mix-up, and risk losing everything, or should he continue the charade? Complicating matters: Law disappeared because he was rubbed out by a member of the Rotola crime family after welching on several million dollars worth of bad debts. A member of the family spies Williamson at the Law mansion and assumes the hit man failed to carry out his mission—a mistake he immediately sets out to correct. With a gunman at his heels and his lavish life seconds from disappearing, how can Bill possibly wriggle out unscathed? You won't believe what happens (or so claims the movie's poster), when Bill Becomes Law.

This film is never coming out—I've already heard several people refer to it as the "Mr. Arkadin of Rob Schneider movies"—but I did manage to get a copy of the soundtrack, which makes canny use of many of 2007s biggest hits. What I'm attempting with my year-end mix is to reconstruct the soundtrack to Bill Becomes Law, so that perhaps, through its music, you can experience the film's glorious wonder.

1. Does any song say bottomless despair better than this one? We open in Bill's squalid apartment. We follow him alone all day on his route, we watch him eat dinner off a card table in front of Press Your Luck reruns. The Fray song both establishes the tone and raises a potent question: how do you save a life? We're about to spend 87 minutes finding out.

2. When the Law limousine pulls up alongside Bill for the first time, just seconds away from changing his life forever, this is what's playing on the car radio. Can you say "foreshadowing"?

3. Bill arrives at the Law mansion, jaw hanging open. It's enormous—full-on marble columns, arced ceiling, stuffy butler, thousand-dollar silverware you throw out when you're done, and five nameless ladies batting a beach ball around in the swimming pool. Something tells me the fine folks of the 350-750 block of Rider Avenue in Huguenot aren't going to be getting much mail this week!

4. This song's first few chords are looping the first time Bill lays eyes on Reginald's girlfriend Alexis. They hold each other's gaze for ages, she thinking her long-lost boyfriend has finally come home, he realizing the stakes have just gotten much, much higher. "What you do to me," indeed.

5. Who cares that lyrically it's not the best fit? This pop-punk confection (trademark, please!) is the perfect accompaniment to scenes of Bill zooming around the mansion on a neon Segway, reorganizing the Law's filing cabinet for them ("Where did he learn to file that way?" they ask) and playing basketball against the L.A. Lakers on the Law's regulation-size court. That it's intercut with scenes of Alexis laughing giddily makes it so much the better. Message received: being a lonely postal worker is, like, so whatever.

6. No, Bill, don't give laxatives to the Weimaraner!

7. Another weird choice lyrically, but the song's foreboding atmosphere is the perfect accompaniment for the first time a member of the Rotola crime family catches Williamson galavanting around the Law mansion and wonders if perhaps hit man Shorty "Tall Boy" Middler hadn't "finished the job."

8. Bill, continuing his filing project for the Law family, comes across Reginald's financial records and realizes, to his horror, why it is that Reginald has "disappeared." He also now understands the source of those strange late-night phone calls, the purpose of that guy in the trench coat who keeps turning up, and the reason that black Cadillac has been parked across the street for weeks.

9. The showdown: the Rotola crime family arrives in full at the Law mansion, ready to rub out Reginald (or so they think) once and for all. Little do they know that they're arriving in the middle of the Law's annual full-family dinner party. The scene is a delicious burst of chaos, complete with flying bullets, screaming children and the requisite food fight. (Oh no! Who let Grandpa Law near the tiramisu?!) It ends when Bill, now realizing the full impact of what he's done, clambers up on a table and hollers: "STOP!"

10. The jig is up. In front of the entire Law clan, the head of the Rotola crime family and—what's worse—a tearful Alexis, Bill admits to the scam he's been running. "How dare you," steams an outraged Sylvia Law, "how dare you lie to my family, betray our trust and play on our emotions just to get to our money!" Looking meaningfully into Alexis's misty brown eyes, Bill softly responds: "It wasn't for the money." And with that, he turns around and walks out.

11. Bill is back at the Post Office, back in that ratty uniform, looking pale and glum and more hopeless than when we met him. But, wait—what's that you say? There's a new girl starting work at the Post Office today? We sense her before we see her: Alexis, showing up for her first day on the job. I ask you, have the postal blues ever looked sexier? Slowly, Bill and Alexis make their way toward each other, dumbfounded, thrilled, overwhelmed. And then, just as the song hits that magnificent chorus, they meet in the center of the sorting room and sink deep into a passionate kiss. Every postal worker in the room with them, without really knowing why, bursts into applause. Roll credits: masterpiece accomplished. I'm getting choked up just writing about it.

J. Edward Keyes is the managing editor of eMusic.