Starring Jean-Phillipe Pearson, Catherine Proulx-Lemay, and Patrice Robitaille. In French with English subtitles. Rating unavailable. Opens Friday, October 21, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Dodging the Clock, an alarmingly funny ensemble piece from Quebec, begins with one of history's first househusbands. Well, he's more of a cave husband, if you want to be precise, and he's only tending Neanderthal Jr. because wifey is off gathering berries. But that doesn't make him feel any better when he has to miss out on that stampeding herd of mastadons. Women!

It's a hokey start, to be sure, but filmmaker Ricardo Trogi asserts that it's our beginning, with guys hard-wired to shirk their duties and gals biologically determined to make them happen. (In Quebec, the film is called Horloge Biologique.) Real life is infinitely more shaded than that. And, anyway, some couples don't even want kids in the first place.

In any case, the director-working with the same writing buddies, Jean-Phillipe Pearson and Patrice Robitaille, who teamed up with him for 2002's Québec-Montréal-decided to concentrate on three hetero units in their mid-30s, all facing the specific travails of baby-making. Pearson plays nebbishy Sébastien, permanently exhausted by a new baby with his patient mate (Julie Perreault), while Robitaille is the more swinging Fred, who'll do anything to thwart every conceivable plan made by gung-ho partner Marie (Geneviíƒ ¨ve Alarie).

Even more screwed up is blond-haired, baby-faced Paul (Pierre-Franíƒ §ois Legendre), who ignores the very pregnant, and very hot, Isabelle (Catherine Proulx-Lemay) in order to pursue puerile dreams of conquest, past and future. (Note to working men: don't leave lists around the office.)

The guys get together regularly in Montreal parks to drink beer, compare notes, and play steadily deteriorating games of baseball as their postadolescent summer winds down. Mostly they bitch about having to grow up, not that they show too many signs of that happening. Both in sharp dialogue and perfectly acted behaviour, Trogi and company get the combination of gritty realism and absurd self-delusion exactly right; they certainly don't let these Peter Pans off the moral hook, even while you sympathize with their genetic plight.

Viewers have a right to complain that the distaff side of the equation is not equally aired here; only Isabelle comes forward as a memorable personality with reasonable foibles and dreams. On the other, knuckle-dragging, hand, Trogi might argue that we already know their side of this primitive story, and he has decided to let us in on the secret fraternity of men struggling to escape the cave. They're still into clubs (and shooters), but now who's heading toward extinction?