The Good Guy

It has smart characters, and is wise about the ones who try to tame their intelligence by acting out.

The result is a more-clever-than-most window into modern urban yuppie mating rituals, tracking just how tough it is to keep a grip on love and the corporate ladder at the same time.

Like its characters, Good Guy is sharp, fun and pleasant to behold, and its recreational, apartment and workplace locales are appropriately slick and showy.

One by one, each scene goes slack as the script struggles with Screenwriting 101 problems like who the main character is and what he wants -- not to mention why any of us should care in the first place.

Such passé testosterone worship might have been passable if the filmmaking weren’t so amateurish--every emotional exchange is accompanied by insipid, high-volume pop songs--and the film’s self-satisfied chest-thumping didn’t extend to its creator as well.

It’s network television drama, starring actors best known for their TV work and full of the petty gripes and mild worries of characters who really have nothing compelling to worry about.

Not just a shabby "Wall Street" knockoff clogged with dull, jargon-spewing trading-desk scenes that fail to advance the plot in any way. It's also a nondescript "Sex and the City" retread.