In his attempt to create a decidedly off-beat romantic comedy, director/writer/actor Schaeffer has forgotten the basic rules of creating a well structured, engaging plot.

"If Lucy Fell" has hilarious -- perhaps even side-splitting moments. But that's all the film has -- a series of disconnected moments, some funny, some just odd -- all lacking in any real cohesiveness.

The relationship between Sarah Jessica Parker and Eric Schaeffer's characters is marked by a cold sterility. They are completely without chemistry. What seems to be the director's attempt at creating a friendship beyond words has succeeded only in creating a friendship that loses our interest and causes us to send the remote careening toward our television. In addition, Schaeffer himself is gross and unappealing. We are almost embarassed to watch him desecrate his own attempt at a character.

The story's culmination -- the realization of these friends' romantic feelings for one another -- is ridiculous and unearned. The revelation comes out of nowhere, both figuratively and literally. The film's most glaring example of poor writing occurs in a scene where Sarah Jessica Parker's Lucy engages in a monologue -- the movie's only monologue -- in which she suddenly and quite randomly comes to the conclusion that she has always been in love with Schaeffer's character. This event is not influenced by the film's other events, as it would be in any tightly constructed narrative, but materializes out of thin air.

The result is an audience left feeling bored and confused.

This is a movie w/ great comedic potential. It is too bad the story is far too inaccessible for this potential to be realized.