GRADE: C

Quirky.

There's a word I'm sure was on the tongues of Fine Line execs and publicists alike, talking up this unlikely comedy from first-time writer/director Steven Baigleman. They must have seen the potential for another "quirky" comedy from an idiosyncratic director, one who would follow in the footsteps of, if not Quentin Tarantino, then at least David O. Russell or the Coen brothers.

Feeling Minnesota tries real hard to be "quirky." And part of the problem is that its quirks are part of an impossibly contrived plot. The slapdash storyline is pure surface -- you can't see any of the twists coming, but they don't exactly surprise you because the story has no interior logic. Like so many films in the Age of Tarantino, this one coasts into theaters on the strength of insincere characters and glib violence.

Your guess is as good as mine why a romantic comedy featuring stars like Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz is allowed to degenerate into generic gunplay and chaos. The opening scenes are almost sweet, with Jjak (Reeves) arriving back at the family home outside of St. Paul for the marriage of his brother Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio). Jjak left home when he was just 8 years old, but mother Norma (Tuesday Weld) welcomes him to the ceremony with open arms, at least until she learns that he had the poor manners to arrive without a present. From that point on, sibling relations grow a little more strained -- reluctant newlywed Freddie (Diaz) screws Jjak on the bathroom floor minutes after she takes her vows with Sam; Mother drops dead of a heart attack after Jjak makes a scene; Jjak takes the bride with him when he leaves town four days later.

Sounds like a pretty terrific set-up, right? Hell, I was hooked. Reeves plays a charming loser whose best romantic idea is to loot a pet store on the way out of town, breaking the window to steal a dog and a bag of puppy chow. Diaz is, finally, a starlet who performs as advertised. She's sulky, seductive and beautiful, and she and Reeves seem made for each other. As the two of them cruise down the highway with their dog, singing along with The Replacements' "I Will Dare" thumping from the stereo of their stolen car, the goofiness really clicks. Anything, it seems, could happen.

Too bad, because it's here that the movie makes a U-turn. Almost immediately, Freddie convinces Jjak to go back to the family spread and steal the money Sam has embezzled from his small-time gangster boss, Red (Delroy Lindo). Naturally, Sam catches him in the act and points a gun at his head. If Sam actually shot Jjak at this point, Feeling Minnesota would be a really short movie. So instead, we have to endure another hour or so of Jjak and Sam shouting, pointing guns, and beating the hell out of one another. This idiosyncratic romance has suddenly become a guy movie with "black comedy" aspirations, but to no real effect.

Freddie is the film's lone female catalyst, but no matter -- she disappears at the end of the first act, victim of a nonsensical plot twist. Courtney Love is billed fairly prominently, but she winds up looking good doing remarkably little. She plays a waitress, pouring coffee and making small talk with D'Onofrio. D'Onofrio is an irritating putz, which is the role he was hired to play, so good for him. Dan Aykroyd is better than you would think as a local cop who gets involved as the sibling rivalry turns nasty. The performances are all quite good, and I can't really fault the direction per se. But the script, I think, needed a thumping.

Movies these days have a new amoral fascination with guns. It's easy to blame Tarantino for this, but he's so far made pretty good movies about criminals, movies that try hard to honestly exploit, if not understand, the relationships between men and how they involve violence, loyalty, and power. Feeling Minnesota, though, hands out the loaded handguns so early on that they become just props. Everyone in this movie has the power to kill everyone else at some point, so when murder is committed, it doesn't come as a shock.

It would have helped to have a little more in the character department, as well. Sam, it turns out, cooked Red's books to make it look like Freddie was stealing money from him; Freddie was forced to marry Sam as her punishment and his reward. Even so, there's little else in the movie to distinguish loathesome loser Sam from loveable loser Jjak -- good thing Keanu's the cute one, or we might not know who to root for. Freddie's cut from the same cloth. Her idea of success is the kind of part in a Vegas floor show that set Showgirls in motion. These characters are truly morose, and their dialogue is even worse. Freddie on life: "Time is like an orange." Jjak on his own misery: "I've never felt ... whatever that word is. Happy."

I kept thinking about Jonathan Demme's Something Wild, a similarly "quirky" comedy that took a sudden, startling left turn into nightmare territory and hit a jackpot. Feeling Minnesota isn't nearly as ambitious as that movie, and maybe that's the problem. Mucking about in low-key gloom, Baigleman can't find the energy or exuberance that would make us care at all whether his characters live, die, or join a Vegas floor show. Feeling Minnesota is low-rent filmmaking that feels slugglishly, disastrously low-rent.