Sept. 10, 2007

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when Britney Spears' much-ballyhooed "comeback" at the MTV Video Music Awards went horribly, horribly wrong.

Was it the opening close-up of her matted, musty mane? Her failure to lip-sync along to her big "Gimme More" line, "It's Britney, b**ch"? Her flesh-squishing Bedazzled bra-and-panty set, which transformed her body from cutely curvy to depressingly dumpy? Or the absence of her once-spirited dance moves, which now have all the energy of a Yugo on a steep incline?

Whenever her somnolent stripper routine ran off the rails, Spears was apparently self-aware enough to realize just how clunky and calamitous her gyrations were.

An insider tells Us Weekly that Brit was seen "crying badly [backstage]. She's devastated. She was really nervous and knows she screwed up."

Adds a snitch to People, "She was just plain nervous because of all the hype and she's embarrassed."

Britney Spears at the VMAs (Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com)

She also made several disastrous decisions just before she descended on stage.

"Britney was supposed to wear a matching corset that she opted out of wearing at the last minute," explains the People mole, while Us reports she canned the hairstylist charged with getting her wonky weave camera-ready (the mane wrangler is the latest in a long line of Spears handlers who have been handed their walking papers).

But a USA Today reporter who caught up with the discipline-lacking, attention-craving, opportunity-squandering former starlet in a hallway post-performance says she was smiling and accepting congratulations from well-wishers. When asked how she thought she fared, she replied, "Good. Thank You."

Later that night, however, "Access Hollywood" spied the Britster looking downcast and "lonely" as she talked on her phone and bit her nails at a Mexican restaurant with a trio of female friends.

Alas, before the terrible evening was over, Spears proved that there were depths of her precipitous decline she had yet to reach. Seems she ditched her itty bitty sequined undies in favor of going commando, a desperately unwise decision paparazzi were more than happy to capitalize on.

Again.

In shots we urge you to seek out only after stockpiling several drums of brain bleach, Britney was snapped clumsily climbing out of a car in a black minidress that left none of her oft-seen lady parts to the imagination.

Oy. Oy. Oy.

No word on whether this was Spears' idea of a ribald rejoinder to Sarah Silverman's monologue at the VMAs, which took a swipe at her well-tended nether regions.

Not surprisingly, Brit's rapidly dwindling fan base tried to find a reason for her by now all-too-typical train-wreck behavior, blaming everything from her stiletto boots to Criss Angel (his rumored illusion for her act never materialized, despite their repeated late-night tête-à-têtes) and Silverman's barbs about her sons Sean Preston and Jayden James, who will celebrate their second and first birthdays, respectively, next week ("They are the most adorable mistakes you will ever see!").

But the fault for her disheartening showing appears to be Spears' alone. A source rightly predicted to the New York Daily News that her choice to hit the Sin City party circuit instead of practicing her routine was a recipe for disaster.

"She's totally phoning this in. She doesn't seem to care how this goes," sniped the mole ahead of her performance. "She's been drinking a bunch and not putting her all into rehearsing."

Britney was snapped whooping it up with Diddy hours before she was due at the VMAs, with a spy telling Us, "She was dancing and having a good time with Diddy all night. She was drinking and letting off steam."

Chances are she's going to blow off a lot more steam once she gets a gander at the spirit-crushing evisceration she received from critics.

"Britney galumphed around like a zombie ... ," zinged Entertainment Weekly, which called her moves "tentative" and "confused," while the Washington Post labeled her "out-of-shape" and pronounced her lethargic lip-syncing a "thoroughly underwhelming performance."

Spears was also derided as "glassy eyed," "out of step" (the Daily News) and "awful" (the New York Times), with an "expression ... of a rabbit caught in the headlights" (the Times of London).

Unfortunately, these reviews were tongue-baths by kittens compared to what the New York Post had to say.

"Spears was stuffed into a spangled bra and hot pants and jiggled like Jell-O as she sleepwalked through the song," jeered the paper. "She didn't seem to care that she danced like she had a pantload, that her lips weren't synched with the song, and that the tune isn't all that great."

The reaction from her so-called peers wasn't much better. 50 Cent was gape-mouthed as he watched the spectacle from the front row, while Rihanna was caught on camera giggling with a girlfriend.

"She didn't seem like she wanted to be there. There was no spark," rapper Common observed to the Daily News. "I don't wanna disrespect her, but she can't sing!"

Adds rapper-cum-producer Akon, "I think she needed to have focused more on the show and less on the parties."

Kanye West took a moment from tossing one of his many (and totally played out) hissy fits to tell USA Today, "I have no words."

Neither did Ashanti, although she didn't need any. When the paper asked her what she thought of Brit-Brit's blah bump-and-grind, she "laughed, rolled her eyes and walked away" before her rep stepped in and said she had no comment.

Meanwhile, as the schadenfreude flows freely over this latest Britney fiasco, there are some who wonder whether Silverman's crack about her diminished future will turn out to be true.

"Was that incredible?" the comedian prodded the crowd after Spears left the stage. "She is amazing. I mean, she is 25 years old and she's already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life."

Next: Romance Report: Jolie-Pitt PDA, Jake & Reese