Starring Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan. Rated PG.

Young Daniel Radcliffe, everyone’s erstwhile Harry Potter, finds a suitable escape hatch in The F Word, a good-natured rom-com that displays his witty side and allows him some zippy chemistry with Zoe Kazan, playing the Canadian apple of his very British eye.

Sparks fly the moment Radcliffe’s Wallace, a failed med-school student adrift in an unusually attractive Toronto, meets Kazan’s animator, Chantry, at an otherwise unpromising party. After she agrees to go out with Wallace, his ardour is dampened by her last-minute mention of whaddayacallit? Oh, yeah: a boyfriend!

They hook up platonically, and as the connection builds, we start to wonder if the BF even exists. Turns out that Ben (the U.K.’s Rafe Spall, going Canuck) is not only real but impossibly handsome, enviably successful, and competitive as hell. Ouch!

In the sex-squeamish U.S., this light-tempered film has the more anodyne title of What If, but the F here mainly stands for friendship—as in the age-old question about whether hetero guys and gals can be pals sans hanky-panky.

The script here, expanded by Vancouver’s Elan Mastai from a two-handed play by TJ Dawe and Michael Rinaldi, leans a little too much on the scatological in place of the scandalous. But it does allow ample opportunity for the charming leads to riff off each other, with the elastic encouragement of director Michael Dowse, of Fubar fame, who also adds some light animation and generally pleasant whimsy to the mix. And the screenplay presents a nice array of invented side characters, including Wallace’s funky best bud (Adam Driver) and Chantry’s unapologetically catty sister (Megan Park).

Wallace also has a sibling, a fellow expert (Jemima Rooper) raising a small son alone (Lucius Hoyos), but these relationships are curiously underdeveloped. Occasionally, in time-honoured tradition, the story works too hard and too obviously to keep its lovers apart. Still, the clichés and rough edges don’t get in the way of the laughs, or the emotional pull, as you start rooting for the twosome to figure out what the F to do next.