Starring Josh Hartnett, Diane Kruger, and Rose Byrne. Rated PG.

Who decided to make Josh Hartnett a star? Sure, he has those dark eyebrows and a certain smouldering intensity, but after a while his one-note shtick starts to look like plain old constipation. And whatever deity deigned to make Diane Kruger the Next Big Thing has even more to answer for. Wicker Park has the dubious virtue of shoving these two nonstarters together, but the results are watchable, considering the deficits.

The film, set in Chicago but largely shot in Montreal, is a remake of a much better French film. Released just three years ago, L'Appartement starred Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, and Romane Bohringer--all as well-known to North American viewers as Eurostars can be--in a love triangle that kinkily kept most of the participants, and the audience, in the dark.

Here, everything has been predictably Hollywoodized, meaning that the male protagonist--Hartnett's photographer-turned-adman, called Matthew--has purer motives and all bedsheets will be safely tucked above all bosoms. To greatly simplify the story, Matthew becomes smitten by Lisa (Kruger), a lovely dancer he spies passing the video store where he works. The spying becomes literal when he follows her and then finagles a phony way to meet her. Love ensues, but when she suddenly disappears, he crashes, eventually reinventing himself in New York with a career change and engagement to a well-connected socialite. And you know that move is doomed when you see that the fiancée is played by Stardom's awful Jessica Paré.

Anyway, after two years of unseen agony, Matthew returns to Chicago, Quebec, where he eventually runs into the long-lost Lisa. Or so he thinks. The woman he mistakes for her (Australia's Rose Byrne) seems quite keen on pursuing the accidental liaison, which turns dangerous when it becomes apparent that she's also seeing Matthew's best friend, a humorous sad sack played by Matthew Lillard, who throws the only genuine fun into the proceedings.

The resulting mix-ups, entanglements, and aborted sort-outs are never less than engaging, and Byrne, despite a few troubles mastering her Yank accent, turns the least likable character into the centre of the story. Mainly, though, the movie is strangled by overdirection by Paul McGuigan, a Scot who wants to be an American, as seen in his earlier progression of work: The Acid House, Gangster No. 1, and The Reckoning.

The oddly named Wicker Park (it's a patch of Chicago land where the lovers keep meeting, or almost meeting) keeps a few European touches--the characters hang out at a bar called Bellucci's and there's a passing Fellini joke--but all the smart asides, split screens, and swirling camera moves mainly seem designed to obscure the fact that the leads have no charisma. Okay, maybe they care about getting together in the end, but no agent or studio executive can make it matter to us.