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"You're a woman to love."

The cast members of Nancy Meyers' Something's Gotta Give stand around begging -- pleading on their knees -- for sharp, punchy, funny dialogue to deliver like only they can. They never get it. Meyers assembles a group of actors most filmmakers would kill for and saddles them with a screenplay that most filmmakers would kill. It doesn't work as a sitcom, it doesn't work as a romantic comedy, and as a study of human behavior it's a disaster of unspeakable proportions. There is a certain amount of entertainment to be had from just watching the leads do their thing, but the script does its best to make them insufferable too.

It's perfect, of course, to cast Jack Nicholson as a suave 60-something bachelor who never dates a woman over 30. Meyers knows that, and I swear she is smugly reclining just outside of frame, patting herself on the back repeatedly. Casting Diane Keaton as his counterpart was more of a prestige thing, even though the actress hasn't done an even moderately acclaimed film since 1996. These actors are up to anything, of course, and preventing me from enjoying their presence is a challenge to which the film doesn't prove equal, but it sure gives it a go.

Nicholson's Harry Sanborn, a 63 year-old music executive, is dating Marin Barry, a young and willing woman played by the gorgeous Amanda Peet. Her mother Erica is a reasonably successful playwright, and Marin decides to take Harry to their second house for the weekend. But behold! -- Erica (Keaton) also arrives, her sister Zoe (Frances McDormand) in tow. They see Harry rummaging in their refrigerator when they come in and logically assume that he is a burglar, which results in a lot of screaming and police-dialing. It turns out that Harry is the only thing more horrifying than a burglar -- he's her daughter's boyfriend! Thank God they haven't had sex yet! "Not even close!"

Harry offers to leave, then Erica offers to leave, then they decide to all stay like the mature adults they clearly are. An uncomfortable dinner leads to the parties retreating to their neutral zones. Erica hears what sounds like sounds of vivacious sex coming from her daughter's bedroom and rolls her eyes, until the screams and moans are supplemented with a yell of "Mom! Come quick!" It would seem that Harry, being of an advanced age, has had a heart attack.

The young doctor (Keanu Reeves) who treats Harry orders him to stay nearby, which means Erica's house (because apparently the city doesn't have hospitals), and also orders Erica, with whose work he is familiar, to go out on a date with him. Meanwhile, Marin breaks up with Harry -- or does he break up with her? -- and advises her long-divorced mother to strike up a relationship, on the grounds that it would be good for her. She is intrigued with Harry, of course, and Harry is intrigued by the idea of dating someone vaguely his age, and he helps her remember that she does like sex.

The Shallow Criticism of the Day is that this movie is just not funny. The Somewhat Less Shallow justification of this is that Nancy Meyers has no idea how to write comedy, or else has forgotten the craft since contributing to the charming screenplay for Father of the Bride. This script is full of movieness -- things that real human beings would never, ever actually do or say -- and yet the dialogue is also flat, entirely lacking in comic punch or momentum, and rarely containing any insight. The conversations are stilted, and the characters come off as being not terribly intelligent, as if they're trying to be funny but just don't have the wit for it.

At 123 minutes, Something's Gotta Give wears out its already tenuous welcome, especially since the plot goes around in circles for the entire latter half. One would think that if Myers was going to make a movie this long, she would take the time to develop her characters in a way that we would believe, but instead she has Jack Nicholson move to an island in the Caribbean and then go back and revisit every woman he has ever dated to find out that -- gasp! -- they all hate him. And the Keanu Reeves character is horribly, horribly betrayed, thrown by the wayside as if his contribution to the film and the conflict was worth nothing.

Jack Nicholson is his usual mischievous self, but Diane Keaton starts to grate by the halfway point. I suspect that may be because Meyers insists on ending every scene with the sight of Keaton leering at the camera. After a while, you can see it coming: the raise of the eyebrows, the cocky half-smile, the sudden cut-away. And Frances McDormand, a wonderfully funny actress, disappears from the film entirely after spending ten minutes standing around doing nothing. Why is she in this movie? If she wanted to take a bit part alongside the two screen legends, she could at least have insisted on some lines.

I don't know how much I was expecting from Something's Gotta Give, but I know that for a film with so much pedigree, I was expecting to like more of it than I did. The stars have their moments, but Nancy Meyers allows them only a precious few.