The classic romantic triangle, older man, younger woman, young man. The older man is the immaculately groomed, impeccably tailored Steve "Suave" Martin (author of the original novella as well as its adapter to the screen), who glides up to the glove counter at Saks, follows the salesgirl's advice on a purchase, then sends it to her home address as a gift along with a dinner invitation, entering her world almost as a fairy godfather to show her a life of luxury whenever he's in town on business, and to turn her head from the unkempt, maladroit young man, the very hairy Jason Schwartzman, who always needs to borrow a couple of dollars on a date. The latter spends most of the movie as a roadie on tour with a rock band, transforming himself through books-on-tape to the point where he could pass at the end as a bargain-basement gigolo. Claire Danes, the woman in the middle, puts a lot of reacting into her acting, a wide-eyed Goldilocks who approaches any bowl of porridge with utmost caution and suspicion, and tastes it with total concentration. The relationships manifest some amusingly out-of-step interactions and offbeat timings, but this slender, mannerly, neat-and-tidy little movie, ushered along by a minimalist trancelike musical score, is more a meditation than a comedy, or a romance, with a sadder-but-wiser moral delivered oddly in third-person voice-over by Martin, whose aura of detachment at last edges up to clinical dissociation. Directed by Anand Tucker. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd